


All About Waiting

by azcendio



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Fix-It, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Spoilers, The Rise of Skywalker Epilogue, They deserve a soft epilogue my loves and so do we
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-18 08:41:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 53,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21891343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azcendio/pseuds/azcendio
Summary: Rey knows all about waiting.  She has waited all her life to find her belonging.  After the final battle of Exegol, she thinks she has found it on the Falcon with the Skywalker name.  But three years later, she finds herself docked on Tatooine with a brokenhearted Millennium Falcon, a drawer of scavenged legacies, and a feeling of immense loss and lives not lived.  If she ever hopes to find her belonging, she must take the first steps towards grieving, healing, and feeling.
Relationships: Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 98
Kudos: 648





	1. For Rey

**Author's Note:**

> This is as much therapy for me, as a firm hope that things will always be made right in the end. This, and all other fanfictions written after TROS, will begin to make things right. I love you all and the support we have given each other through all the years, and I love these two characters with every fiber of my being. They deserve to heal, and they deserve a soft epilogue.

Life is a gradient. Happiness comes in increments of color. For a time, Rey’s happiness is a shade of solid black. Then, it is dark gray. It is Ben Solo’s shirt.

She took it, the day everything was given and taken from her. She took it, along with the Skywalker lightsabers and name, and kept it all. Just as she had once kept so many scavenged things to herself in that AT-AT walker on Jakku. But Rey did not take Ben’s shirt or those lightsabers, or herself back to that place; she would never live inside a fallen giant ever again. She would not let Ben live inside that false legacy, either. 

But... Rey just couldn’t let that legacy go. She couldn’t bear to see the Solo and Skywalker names fade, as Ben had faded before her eyes. As Luke and Leia had. As Han Solo had, in a way. So, Rey scavenged what she could and kept it all. She saved what she loved as best she could.

Her best never felt quite enough, though. 

Ben’s shirt is tied around the captain’s seat of the Millennium Falcon. It rests there, around _her_ seat, a softness that always presses against her back and reassures her. Pushes her to move forward. To fly. It feels like him, close and kind and knowing… and sometimes absolutely annoying and inconvenient. Loving and loved. It once smelled so much like him that the hairs on her neck would rise, remembering and feeling as though he was right there again cradling her neck and back. But now it smells like her, and sometimes she notices a ridiculous amount of Chewie’s hair on it. Now the fabric of the shirt is tired, faded. And so are the ship’s parts. 

Rey postponed replacing the Falcon’s parts for a ridiculous amount of time. Chewie’s wailing as panels fell on his head, or from under his heavy stomping feet, became background noise. She shrugged off Finn’s not-so-subtle hint that the place needed “a new coat of paint.” Like Ben’s shirt lying on the back of her seat, like the lightsabers she nestled safe in a drawer with the Jedi texts, like Han’s pair of dice still dangling in the cockpit… the Falcon was scavenged from another. And even with Chewie’s blessing, Rey can’t shake the feeling that it just doesn’t belong to her. Not yet. And so she just can’t bear to change a thing.

At least, that is, until the motivator blows out.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Rey stiffly mumbles past the smoke at Chewie, who mumbles out his own discontent on the matter. She can feel him eyeballing her the entire time she struggles to, and fails to, get the situation under control. Yet, even with multiple parts going up in literal flames, Rey can’t bring herself to ask for help.

It’s Chewie who moves. He goes to the cockpit and steers the situation towards the closest spaceport. They dock in Mos Eisley. 

Rey silently blames her lightheadedness on the fumes, and finally moves away from them. She exits the ship with Chewie and lets someone else in to assess the damage. 

The ‘someone else’ is a rather loud, elderly woman who questions her about everything and anything. Yet Rey doesn’t offer much of anything besides a “yes” or a “no” as she stands, tired and clearly agitated in the stranger’s hangar.

“You really did a number on this here ol’ lady,” the equally old lady scolds Rey. Despite the wrinkles and bad posture, there is still a vivid color to her cheeks as she rages against Rey’s neglect of the Millennium Falcon. Her brown eyes are alight, and her hair is a chaotic collection of live wires. Just standing in front of her is enough to jolt something awake in Rey.

“Excuse me!” Rey snaps, taking a step forward towards the woman and dodging the three rickety droids that spaze around them. “I didn’t do anything to her. It’s not my fault she’s falling apart! _It’s not!_ ”

Chewie makes a quiet noise and places a hand on Rey’s shoulder; he’s not exactly pulling her back, or keeping her still. Rey gets the sense he knows better than to do that. He knows.

The woman doesn’t; it’s not her fault either. Rey swallows down the anger. “I’m sorry,” she says, though her throat is tight and stubborn and doesn’t want to apologize for anything anymore to anyone who doesn’t know. And so many people just don’t know…

“What’s your name?” the woman asks, a little softer this time. She lifts up a datapad on which she has the hideous repair list for the Falcon. It’s in need of quite a bit of work. And the woman is clearly in need of information Rey isn’t quite willing to give. Still.

“I’m Rey.”

The woman raises an eyebrow. “Rey’s a pretty unique name ‘round these parts, but… any last name I can put on this? These days, the government’s real up the ass about proper documentation of who’s comin’ and goin’ out of spaceports.”

Rey chokes on all the names she has buried in her heart. She struggles to pull one out. She goes with the least painful one.

“Skywalker.”

The woman smiles. “Now that’s not a name I’ve heard in my hangar.” She jots Rey’s name down on the datapad, and gives a small, well-meant laugh. “Except as gossip.”

Rey puffs up, Chewie’s hand becomes slightly firmer but- before Rey can explode again- the woman lowers the datapad and lifts a hand between them. “I’m Peli. Peli Motto, since we gotta be official an’ all that.”

Peli winks. Rey tries her best, and smiles, and shakes Peli’s hand. Another interaction somewhat successfully had. The rest of the conversation is, unfortunately, an automated exchange of necessary information about the Falcon, mechanic repairs, and credits. Credits neither Rey or Chewie particularly have after their last, failed, business arrangement. Neither of them are happy about any of it at the moment.

Chewie shrugs and gives the only suggestion he can think of. And, as usual, he’s got a point.

“You’re right,” Rey says, giving a small smile. “Maybe we can sell those scavenged parts here.”

As she watches the droids and Peli vanish into the ship to repair the mess, Rey’s stomach twists. Her eyes sting. Her fingers itch for something at her waist that isn’t there. 

“Actually,” she forces out. “I’ll do it. You stay here and watch the Falcon, make sure Peli doesn’t do too much to her.”

Chewie frowns and makes a disgruntled sound.

“Well, I’d stay,” Rey shoots defensively, “but it looks like I’ve done enough damage here. At least I know how to up-sell scavenged goods. I can do that, at least.”

Her friend’s concern grows louder, but Rey doesn’t stick around to hear the rest. She goes into the ship, dodging anxious droids and Peli’s curious looks, and grabs what she needs: the bag of scavenged parts. But a feeling grabs her right back. 

Rey is seized by a feeling, in front of a small nook, which hides other scavenged parts: the Jedi texts, the lightsabers, the whispers of the Force she has shut away for years now. The feeling is overwhelming and crackles across her skin, down into her bones and through her veins. It has a life of its own, familiar and painful in its warmth and light. And all the while, there is a shade of dark gray in her periphery. 

In a brisk movement of desperate hands and rickety Falcon parts, Rey digs out the lightsabers from the drawer and shoves them in her bag. They clamor against one another, against the other scavenged bits and pieces. With a small shake of the bag and a heave over her shoulder, the relics of Luke and Leia sink to the bottom. 

One borrowed landspeeder and a relatively quick sale of goods later, Rey finds herself in the Jundland Wastes. The air is dry as it whips around her; yet another familiar feeling. At the speed she’s going, the Tatooine desert doesn’t feel much different from Jakku. It is just as vast, desolate and dangerous. Yet, just like on Jakku, Rey is eerily calm. Tranquil. At least, she is as long as she’s moving. It’s only when she stops, in front of the Lars homestead, that she remembers all the things she never made time to remember.

_“I am all the Jedi.”_

Rey doesn’t feel like that anymore. She hasn’t felt like any Jedi for two years now. She hasn’t felt like herself for three years. She feels trapped, always. Even standing in a vast and desolate desert, there is too much surrounding her, keeping her stuck in place. 

_“Look at yourself.”_

Ben’s voice invades her secrets and pushes them to the forefront of her mind.

How many times had she caught her reflection on shiny surfaces and felt her breath stolen from her lungs? Thinking she was seeing someone else? Was she losing more than just her breath in those moments? Maybe Rey let everything on the Falcon rust just to avoid those terrifying moments. Better not to see, not to know.

_“You can’t go back to her now. Like I can’t.”_

The bag over Rey’s shoulder is heavier than it was when she left the Falcon. Yet, at present, it only carries two things. Twin items. They seem to be sinking further still in the bag, trying to fall into the dry earth.

_“You know what you have to do.”_

“I do.” 

Rey’s confession comes out in tatters, her voice and body shaking from the weight on her shoulders. From the weight of actions and legacies and words said and unsaid. From waiting.

_“You’re still holding on. Let go.”_

She lets go. 

She lets go of the bag, easing it onto the ground. The sand is forgiving and moves to make a small home for its visitors. Rey sinks into the sand along with them, sitting there with them, with twin suns beaming down on her skull. The air is still as dry as when she was speeding across the landscape. But now it is not so cool, not so calm. It is sweltering with the nearness of those twin suns. It is not as forgiving as the sand. And the sand now isn’t so forgiving either. It itches against her skin, clinging to parts of her that do not want to be touched- not by something so familiar and cruel. The grains have nearly the same consistency as those on Jakku. In the heat waves, she can easily mistake the bleak clay mounds of the Lars family home for the broken war machine she had once been forced to call _her_ home.

There is another reason she absently took the Skywalker name. Organa, Solo… Palpatine… they didn’t fit into the hole of her belonging. She had always belonged to the desert and the deserted. Like Luke. 

Like Luke, she feels stuck, lost, alone… even when surrounded by her new family. “We’re here for you,” they would say. Finn, especially, like a brother to a sister, would comfort her through the good and filthy, ugly days she would have. Only, he never understood. He could not understand what she had gained, and he could never understand what she had lost in a matter of hours. Luke, were he around, would have in some way. But even he…

Rey grabs his lightsaber from the bag and chucks it at the sand. She wants to bury it, deep into the scorching, hellish earth and trap it on Tatooine forever. Yet the external heat of the desert has nothing on the inferno burning internally. There are molten tears brimming, then seeping, then pouring out of her.

The lightsaber begins its descent into the earth. She doesn’t touch it, only snarls and lashes out at it with her feelings. It is the first time in a long time she has used the Force, and it moans around her as though in mourning. And why shouldn’t it mourn? This is a funeral. Just not for Luke.

As the Skywalker legacy disappears beneath sand and rage, Rey hastily reaches into the bag for Leia’s- the metal is cold and stuns her still. The stun is momentary, brief enough for Rey to hear past the fire-

_“Rey, never be afraid of who you are.”_

She jolts away from Leia’s lightsaber, her hands splayed out behind her to keep from falling completely into the sand. Her brown eyes are illuminated by fear, and she stares down at the discarded lightsaber as though it were alive. As though by touching it, its owner would arise from the crystal and rightly reprimand her for being so childish. She could almost hear Leia’s disappointment. If Rey hadn’t been so deaf to the Force for so long, maybe she would have heard it all this time. 

Afraid of hearing and seeing Leia in front of her, Rey shuts her eyes.

“I want to be no one again,” she sobs quietly. It is a damned confession, and she is ashamed of such a wish. Ashamed of breathing it into the Force that had given her life and meaning. “I know I shouldn’t… but, I want to be no one. Who I am… the names inside me… they mean too much. They weigh too much. I feel _too much_ about them. _And for what?_ I’m alone. All these names- the people I could’ve been- I’m not! I’m not any of them! I belong to none of them! I belong to no one! I’m alone. _I’m alone._ ”

And despite saying it aloud, despite the shaking and the sudden cold that pools over her body and pushes her down onto the ground, Rey still waits. She waits, fallen on the ground, eyes closed… waiting for _him_ to say it. She waits for Ben to walk into her mind, to sit down beside her and tell her the one thing she needs to hear, the one thing that is true- or was:

_You’re not alone._

But the voice in her head is not his. It’s not Leia’s, or Luke’s. For a brief moment, she believes it to be Han. There is a flash of the Millennium Falcon, old and tired as she is, with Chewie in the copilot seat and Ben’s shirt tied around hers… waiting for her return. It’s then she realizes whose voice is in her head, comforting her, telling her the truth she needs to hear: herself.

The wildfire in her chest calms into the heat of a hearth. 

Rey turns on her side and takes deep breaths, feeling the dry air move into and out of her. She refuses to let anything get trapped inside her. Each breath out is a breaking wave against the sand. It is wet, pained, grieving, and necessary. She has waited long enough to mourn and it is time. And the Force mourns with her silently, wrapping her in a blanket of life and death. She has worn this blanket many times, never fully acknowledging it. It is heavy. In one moment it is damp, and the next it is warm. In the next, it feels like arms cradling her. 

_Be with me._

She sighs, curls into the embrace and rests.

* * *

When she comes to and opens her eyes, the suns are blushing. They have been caught leaving, and are encroaching upon the horizon. Since Ben’s death, Rey has loathed sunsets, never admitting why. She has always known why, but now… she sits up and admires the lush colors. 

Even endings have beauty, as bittersweet as those endings may be.

Leia’s lightsaber catches the fading light and shines it into Rey’s eyes. Immediately, Rey is overwhelmed with guilt and glances towards the place she buried the Skywalkers. She crawls over to the burial and presses her hand onto the earth, feeling the hum of a sleeping kyber crystal. She calls to it, one last time, and it rises eagerly to take her hand. She holds it, choking on the memory of who had last held it before her, and forces herself to breathe the memory out. 

Both lightsabers are returned to her bag and placed over her shoulder. They may not be hers, but they were not hers to let go of either.

By the time Rey reaches Bay three-five, one sun has passed on beyond the horizon. The other holds onto the edge, waiting and painting the sky a soothing shade of purple. 

Peli pops her head out from behind a tower of containers and, in a refreshing change, Rey’s smile comes effortlessly when met by another person. 

“Well, at least you treated my landspeeder with more care than your ship,” Peli remarks. The wrinkles around Peli’s mouth soften her smirk. Rey winces, but holds onto the smile; it feels too good to let go of.

“Is she alright now?” Rey asks, concern causing premature wrinkles on her forehead as she glances up at the Falcon. Out of the corner of her eye, she catches Peli’s nod and a curious look at the bag Rey carries.

“Good as, well, I can’t legally say new but- she’s as good as she’ll ever be. Another mechanic gave me a hand, as he always does- can’t take the hint that my droids and I can handle things just fine on our own. But young people always think us old folk are brittle as crackers! Sure that’s why you left your Wookiee here, too, to make sure I didn’t bust a hip repairin’ this heap of junk.”

Rey laughs and shakes her head. “He’s not my Wookiee. He’s my friend. Is he in the ship with the mechanic?” 

Peli scoffs and waves a hand towards the door Rey just came through. “Nope! The useless hairball left seconds after you did. Wailed at me about some cantina and took off.”

On any other day, Rey would not have cared a bit about Chewie venturing off to a cantina. But today, with multiple strangers entering and touching the Millenium Falcon- Rey’s skin prickles and her muscles turn to steel. 

“So the mechanic is alone in _my_ ship?”

Peli’s eyebrows raise at Rey’s tense, antagonized tone. 

“That is what mechanics do, yes,” is Peli’s blunt reply. “If you’re worried ‘bout him stealin’, don’t be. He doesn’t care much for material things- well, I mean, he cares a lot ‘bout ships and parts… but you should see his hangar! It’s been two years since he started here, yet the boy doesn’t have anythin’ layin’ about that he doesn’t need- and he doesn’t need or want much. If you ask me, he _needs_ to get a life- and stop nosin’ in my business.”

This does little to soothe Rey and she’s already advancing towards the ship, only to be stopped by a very poignant cough. She turns to see Peli’s outstretched hand. Rey grimaces, sheepish as she pays off her debt. The embarrassment calms her down enough to enter the Falcon with a level head- that is, until a feeling comes over her. The same feeling that had grabbed her as she was leaving the Falcon earlier that day. The same feeling grabs her, overwhelms her and crackles across her skin, down again into her bones and pounding through her veins. It absolutely has a life of its own, familiar and heart-wrenching in its warmth and light- 

Immediately, Rey follows the feeling- at first, with tip-toes and stifled breath. But then she is rounding a corner, approaching the cockpit and barreling towards the feeling. It is alive, calling out so loudly and reaching a crescendoing cry-

Rey stands at the doorway of the cockpit. It is wide-open, yet she can’t see much inside. Not with the mechanic standing in it, in a self-imposed uniform of dark gray, and his back turned to her. His back is so broad she swears it blocks out the entire sunset outside. Though, what’s outside doesn’t matter; _him_ , he matters.

“When I heard this ship belonged to a Skywalker, I had to see it for myself,” the mechanic says, and the richness of his voice fills her, inflames her arteries and makes her heart pound erratically. The voice is too intense, too sweet to hear in person. Yet, when he sighs, Rey takes a step forward into the cockpit to take it and him in more deeply.

When she does so, Rey notices the man’s hand is raised, cradling Han’s lucky pair of dice where it dangles above. His thumb brushes over the smooth surface, and Rey swears she can feel him touching her skin.

“Doesn’t look like a Skywalker ship to me,” he says, dropping his hand. His head drops slightly, too, dark waves of hair shifting slightly to follow his every move. As her eyes do the same. Her heart squeezes at her lungs, and her ribs feel pushed by the force of him. This… _mechanic_ who doesn’t need or want much, yet feels so conflicted. She can feel his need and want for so much more than he has. And yet, as much as he wants to turn and face her, he does not.

“That’s because it doesn’t belong to a Skywalker,” Rey finally speaks, her voice strong and pushing back against the force of fear to make space for the truth. The truth threatens to come out of her eyes before her mouth, but she’s determined to say it. She drops the lightsabers to the ground, her hand too shaky to hold them any longer. Not wanting to carry them right now. Not when she needs to be honest with him, with herself. She needs to say-

“It belongs to Solo.”

He turns then, as he has always turned for her: slowly and softly and revealing a great regret and love. He is as vulnerable and terrifyingly beautiful as she has always seen him in her sleep, as she saw him last in waking. And just as when she awoke from death to feel him, and see him before her, all she can think to say is:

“Ben.”

And just like he had then, Ben smiles now. It’s a smile that can blind twin suns. It blinds her then, makes her see all light and no dark. Her happiness is no longer a shade of dark gray. It is no longer just one shade of any color- it is all color, all light. 

Yet, in all her blindness, Rey finds her way to Ben. She leaps upon him, embracing him so tightly his surprised laugh barely makes it out alive. It is a short-lived laugh, cut off as he wraps his arms around her, too, and holds on for the life gained and for all the time lost. They are silent, holding on to so much and letting go of just as much. She can feel pain between them, oozing out of infected, scabbed wounds. She has so many questions pouring out of her into the Force, into him and demanding answers back. But she can also feel his shirt tied around her, his limbs all real inside it, soft and pressing and reassuring her. Pushing her to move forward and into him. She doesn’t feel the ground pulling at her anymore; she feels the euphoria and adrenaline of a ship taking off- not running away or hiding or wandering anymore, but shooting forward to a clear destination. It is a loving and loved feeling. She presses into the feeling, into Ben’s shirt and Ben’s life.

And he smells so damn good.

“Wherever you’ve been, you’ve been hard to find,” Ben teases into her hair, lips kissing wherever they touch. He shifts, turning his head to look at her, in all her closeness. She does much the same, analyzing and admiring him. Ben’s face is much the same as it had been on Exegol. Tender with old wounds, but healing. No scars, no mask, just love and wonder. And she wonders, too, and places a gentle hand upon his dimpled cheek, reassuring herself it’s all very real. Ben leans into the touch, never taking his disbelieving and adoring eyes off hers. His smile presses into her skin, a gift in the palm of her hand.

She gives in return a small laugh of nervous relief. “And you’re clearly hard to get rid of.”

Ben laughs at that, but it’s another short-lived one. 

Rey leaps up to kiss him, pulling him down to her as his arms tighten and simultaneously pull her up to him. They meet in the middle, communicating what they can in a bruising, electrifying and homecoming kiss. They leave words for later, as they always have- but knowing how deeply they need to talk. And they would. But that could be done when Chewie arrived. What they plan to do now could never be done in Chewie’s presence, or anyone else’s for that matter. And she was done waiting for another time.

Ben’s shirt is the first thing to go.


	2. For Ben

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey has every intention of acting upon her impulse to ravish Ben Solo in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon after finally being reunited. However, Ben has had three years to think about this moment, and there are some things that cannot be left unsaid any longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I definitely caved and, uh, continued this one-shot. Again, for therapy reasons and also because it's definitely guaranteed to have a happy, and cohesive, ending. I can guarantee you that. Enjoy!

Ben’s shirt is the first thing to go, and Rey’s first instinct is to touch. She kisses him again, and grabs hold of every part of him- gripping Ben’s bare shoulders and heavily dragging her fingers down the front of him. The labors of war have not left Ben’s body, only transformed into labors of rebuilding; Rey can feel every bit of his tension and his relief in the movement of muscles beneath her hands. He is in one moment the softest presence- kissing her cheek and chin as she sighs and anchors her nails into his giving back. In the next, he is a storm of emotion- barreling into her in waves, returning her kisses with such desperate enthusiasm that his emotions transfer within their bond, lifting her upon a crest of sensation just readying to fall into sweet bliss-

Ben’s shirt was the first thing to go, but Rey refuses for it to be the last. She reaches for his belt-

“ _Rey._ ”

Her name rolls through her, all sea foam, and she grins into Ben’s lips. The belt clasp gives a telling _click-_

“Rey-” Ben’s hips literally swoop back from her hands. His own hands morph into restraints on her shoulders and, with a full-body flinch, he says: “no.”

Immediately, Rey’s hands recoil. Her eyes narrow in confusion, singularly focused on Ben’s torn expression and the song their bond continues to sing despite his words. 

“I don’t understand. You want to-”

“Yes,” he blurts, craving beyond words to put Rey at ease. His grip softens on her shoulders, only to let go entirely. “I do.” He grimaces. “Oh, I do. But not- not like this.” 

At Rey’s continued confusion, and hurt, he scrambles for an accurate explanation; it feels like static between them, like a frayed wire attempting to make the electric jump. “We should wait. You need time.”

The jump falls flat on its face. It sparks an electric fire.

“ _I need time_?”

Ben’s grimace deepens and, the hand he should have been using to touch her, presses onto his left temple instead. “Instant regret,” he mutters. “Instant.”

“You let me think you’re _dead_ for three years.” Rey’s eyes aren’t narrowed anymore in confusion. Her entire face wrinkles with resentment. “ _But I need time_?”

“You’re proving my point,” Ben reveals at the tail-end of a cosmic sigh. He’s carrying that half-smile Rey paradoxically loves and loathes. It’s him, trying to smile in spite of pain and trepidation; it’s also him being a smart-ass.

Rey offers nothing in return except for a well-groomed glower. She commits to it fully, unlike Ben and his half-assed smile. Eventually, the weight of her anger capsizes him. The smile rinses off, and he sinks down into the co-pilot’s seat. His hand reaches out and, again, does not touch her. Ben makes a small hint of a gesture towards the captain’s chair; Rey’s ribs jab against her lungs, and her heart hurts.

Ben frowns, sensing the wound; it is still festering, and oozing, and angry. “We should talk.”

For a second Rey just stands there in all her frustration, until Ben awkwardly looks to her empty seat and spots both of his shirts; the eldest is still fondly tied around the back, but the other is haphazardly thrown on the seat cushion. Ben leans forward and reaches-

Rey swoops in and sits on top of his shirt. She does so quite indignantly and proudly, with eyebrows raised in challenge. Ben doesn’t pull back. Instead, he smirks and rests his arm on his knee. He remains leaned in, pressing the weight of himself and the conversation on her. Still smirking. 

She puffs up rather childishly and, annoyed by his influence, she forges a shield between them. Her arms cross in front of her chest. “Where should we begin?”

The smirk teeters and falls off the edge of Ben’s own nerves. He brings his other arm to rest on the knees as well, putting his full weight into the moment. Yet, there’s a strange tight energy, like he’s pulling back. His hands clasp together, and wring one another. On a deep inhale, his eyes glance up at the ceiling and fall on his father’s lucky die. There’s a short, cursed laugh before Ben turns back to Rey. 

“Well,” he begins smoothly, and she can see him polishing the words before they roll off his tongue. “Before the main course, I have to say: I admire your willingness to carry on my fucked-up family name, but you really made things complicated for…” He tellingly glances down at his lack of upper body wear, “us.”

Rey takes a deep breath through the nose, hopefully stealing from Ben’s air reserve. “We’re not actually cousins.”

“No, no,” Ben concedes, reluctantly. Half his face winces, and the other half seems to be getting quite a kick out of everything. “You’re just the grand-daughter of my grandfather’s nemesis, the same grand-daughter who also just so happened to take _my_ grandfather’s name.”

“You know what? I think I’ll go now-”

The springs in Rey’s tense muscles jump, but so do Ben’s. “Wait!” He hastily places a hand on her thigh. She freezes mid-launch from the chair.

“Wait, Rey.” His facade shatters in the explosion, revealing the mechanic- the broken man who wants to fix things. “Please.”

“Don’t ‘please’ me,” she mutters as she begrudgingly sits back down. It takes less than a second for her words to crash on impact; she can feel Ben’s amusement teasing the back of her neck. Rey’s cheeks and eyes flash red. “You know what I mean! You’re the one being insensitive for a laugh.”

“Rey-”

“You left!” 

And she’s shooting up again, her seat swiveling violently as she goes. Ben’s hand does nothing to stop her. It retracts; his whole body retracts to give her space. 

“Whether you meant to or not, you did!” Rey knows she’s shouting, she’s furious, but she can’t help it. The feeling rolls off her like an insurmountable tide. “For three years, you were _gone_ . For one whole year after you died, I searched for you in the Force but- _You. Were. Gone._ You were just gone! _Why?_ I deserve to know why! _WHY!_ ”

“Because I was meant to die!”

The words expel from him, broken bits of a meteor falling. The first pieces that fall through the atmosphere are achingly loud and critical as they land. The rest of it fizzles out, getting smaller and smaller as the fire burns it into nothing but a flash of silent pain. At the end, only Ben remains- curled up in a crater of his own making. He is bent down over himself, hands clasped in his hair, trying to hold together what’s left of the fallen meteorite.

“I was.” Ben’s voice is small, fragile, and barely reaches her from inside the crater. “I had written myself off as dead long before Exegol.”

In the aftermath, Rey looks down at what she knows to be Ben Solo. The outer layers of the mechanic, of Han Solo’s wit and Leia’s fortitude are stripped from him in the crash. It’s just Ben. Alone. As he has been for much too long. The desolation she feels as a void between them is a familiar one. She has only just managed to crawl out of her own hollow. So, naturally, Rey sits back in her seat and slides down into his crater. To be beside him. 

Eventually, Ben regains strength and unfurls. His head slowly rises and his hands drag over an exhausted expression, righting it, before clasping together in front of his mouth; they serve as a passage for his words, shaping the truth into something soft but still honest. He never could, never would, lie to her.

“Rey, with you, I was alive. For you. But I was always meant to die, for you.” 

Rey’s eyes burn, from not blinking. They swell, from seeing the truth of Ben’s destiny in his eyes- or, at least, what he thinks his destiny had to be. He shrugs the weight of it off, and rests his chin upon blanched knuckles. 

“I made peace with that- with all I’d done, all the time I had spent imprisoned in my own grave… I was at peace with that destiny. And I got more out of it than I thought I ever would- I was grateful, for you. So, I was at peace with dying at Exegol. I was.”

Weight tossed aside, Ben drops his hands and stares at them. They hang lamely in space, until he turns them. His palms stare back at him. Ben’s focus drifts between his fingers. “Then, when I… _passed_ , I felt my mother. Her life force was right there. You were holding my hand… and she was holding the other.”

Ben traces the place Rey’s hand had held his, and echoes the same motion on his other palm. All the while, a tranquil smile eases onto him. Finally, he meets Rey’s gaze. Their connection hums a sweet, fluttering tune of hope. It’s brief- but Rey clings to the notes, remembering it for them both.

“My mother was guiding me somewhere,” Ben explains quietly, focused on each word as though it’s a puzzle piece; even though he already figured it out, while the picture looks whole, the pieces still feel disjointed with small gaps in between. There are gaps in memory, and in choices. His eyes narrow, honing in on one hole in particular. 

“She led me away from you… and I let her.” His admission is tangled in emotion. Ben averts his gaze from Rey, retreating to his hands. “I followed the feeling, and it felt like a very long journey, a long sleep. It was peaceful…”

Rey watches Ben, silently bathing in the sight of him and the sensation of that peace he speaks of. She feels it, too. It is hers, in the journey back to him, and it is his- in his journey back to himself. She tastes that peace on her tongue and holds it between her teeth, determined to keep it. Even when he slips into silent pensivity, and all the questions in her head expand to fill the vacuum. 

Ben turns his head and looks out at the darkened hangar. The suns have set; his mind settles on the thin line between past and present.

“Then,” he sighed, fatigued, “I woke up in a place I’d never been before but I had heard of it- my grandfather’s home, from when he was a child. Before he joined the Jedi. I’m not sure how much time had passed between my dying and waking, because when I woke up… I wasn’t exactly… _alive_. My body had returned, but everything else trickled back slowly. I was a child again, learning how to walk, how to feel… how to remember. I remembered an island… Ahch-To, the island you dreamed of-”

There is a wistful lightness to him, the cleansing touch of seabreeze on skin. It lifts her momentarily, before a sudden shift in the breeze drops her and him into absolute, terrifying freefall. He catches her eyes as they grapple with the feeling, the strange bliss and distress of it. This feeling is a memory for him, one he is still suspended in and trying desperately to fall out of.

“I remembered you, and I reached out. I tried to find you in the Force, but I couldn’t feel you. Nothing. I knew you had to be alive. So, I thought it was me.” 

Of course he did. 

Ben’s eyes move haphazardly around the cockpit, his eyebrows knit, instinctively trying to patch together the only narrative that made sense. At the time. “It was a punishment- a, a stripping of my past abilities. My connection to the Force just wasn’t the same… but after a few months, everything came back but you.”

He finally lands from the freefall, his eyes locked on hers. The energy between them is more alive than it ever was before; all the movement in his emotions and in hers is constant friction on their connection. There is so much shared between them, all the chaos and serenity of loss and love, and it has always been there. Always. Except.

“You closed yourself off, Rey. You stopped looking for me.”

“So did you.”

The Force surges. Tumultuous with all the chaos, doubt and grief, it is too loud. Neither of them speak words. There is no need; there is no point. There is too much in the way of words, a thundering pain that demands feeling over exposition. It is the promised monsoon, the accumulation of dark clouds Rey has ignored and that Ben has watched silently gather overhead for three years. They let every drop fall, every sensation land and sink into their pores, into their bloodstream. The festering wounds they have so haphazardly patched up, only to have them scab open and ooze out in their embrace- the storm washes them clean. But they are left exposed to the elements, still. The wounds are open, still.

It is in the eye of the storm Ben takes his chance. He reaches for Rey with all he has, and she lets him. His soul touches hers just before his hand touches her cheek, both cradling her carefully- adoringly. His body is no longer seated in the co-pilot’s chair. Ben is on his knees, in front of her, as close as he can get. As close as she will allow. 

“I’m so sorry.”

His apology is drowning in the weight of itself. His body chokes on the storm’s flood, and it overflows in ways she is familiar with: the quake of his chin and lips, the damming tension in his clenched jaw, the brimming tears in his eyes. She had only ever witnessed the desperate flinch of Ben’s eyebrows once before he died, and it was enough then to twist her ribs. It was enough to haunt her after he left. Juxtaposed with the tenderness of his palm resting and recording the shape of her cheek, it is too much now. It is too close. 

“I thought you wanted to forget me.”

His fear… it is too far from the truth. 

“ _Never._ ” Rey clasps his hand where it remains on her cheek, pressing him closer- too close, with her nails dug into his skin. There is a spark, a wince, in the Force. Rey takes a deep breath, and her grip eases. But it does not let go. Her other hand reaches for more of him. 

Ben leans in as she drifts through his hair, fingers coming to shore on his cheekbone, her thumb trailing down the path to his lips. She knows where to land, where to touch in order to get what she longs for. At the corner of his mouth hides a beautiful reflex. She barely presses it before he eagerly responds. A gentle smile brushes across her thumb.

Even with a smile, Ben is drowning still. He is looking up from under feelings she cannot help but pour onto him, and the feelings fill his ears- and hers, too. It’s overwhelming, and impossible, to hear the meaning of it all. And she knows they have never been quite as well with communicating words as they have been with feeling- but they have made each other wait an excruciating amount of time, and all for lack of understanding. A lack of the right words. So Rey speaks.

“I love you.” 

Rey pulls Ben up, head above water, and presses her lips to his. It’s a kiss of air, lightness, and he rises. His arm wraps around her and pulls her closer, onto his lap, and they sink down together into the feeling she has finally put words to. Knowing what it is allows them to rise and fall without the fear of unseen depths. No more drowning. They float.

Eventually, though, she does have to let him breathe. 

Reluctantly, Rey eases out of the kiss. Refusing to be farther away than necessary, she presses her forehead to his. For a moment, she watches Ben. His eyes are closed, as if asleep, with a rested smile on his face. She wants to kiss him again; to kiss him asleep and awake and asleep again- but Ben’s eyes open and she sees herself in them. She sees her wants, mistakes- her choices. He deserves to know them.

“I never wanted to forget you. I tried everything I could to find you- in memories, in feeling, but that was the problem! I grew frustrated- no, _no_ -” Rey shakes her head and scolds herself, so distracted by her own process she doesn’t realize she’s fidgeting all over the place. Ben discreetly adjusts and she promptly, unconsciously, sits on his lap. Her nerves settle, slightly.

“No, I was angry,” she admits. “I was so filled to the brim with anger and I couldn’t do anything about it. Everything around me was so happy and light- _rebuilding anew_. Balance restored. But I couldn’t do it anymore- pretend to be at balance with the Force- so I closed it all off. All those feelings, when none of them were you. All this life, when I didn’t feel any belonging to it. All those Jedi who said they were with me, yet couldn't spare a second to explain where you were.”

“Yeah, that sounds like them.”

Rey stills, partly because of the strange tremor of Ben’s chuckle against her side. Mostly, though, she stills to focus on the warmth of Ben’s bare arms around her. One arm lays lazily at her hip and there is an occasional, subdued, stroke of fingers over her thigh. His other arm has more purpose to it, supporting her back with hand anchored in her hair. He guides her to rest on his shoulder. The second she does, she curls into his chest, into him as the embrace grows more secure. The arm around her waist coils, holding her closer. His cheek nestles upon the top of her head.

“Rey.” 

She smiles at her name, just Rey, just from him. She nuzzles into the naked crook of his neck.

“I love you, too.”

Ben nearly loses his chin.

Rey’s head flicks up so fast, her skull knocks against his jawbone. “Ow,” is all he manages to get out before she’s kissing him again, kissing his smile and his joy. They are brief, fluttering kisses- incapable of landing for too long because of teeth and laughter. Gradually, it calms, and she kisses him softly, holding his face in place so she can savor it fully. 

Each kiss between them has tasted differently from the last. The first tasted like fuel and ash. The one before this was seasalt. With all that gone, her taste buds are overcome with sweetness; so much so her teeth begin to hurt.

When Rey pulls away this time, Ben registers the bittersweet feeling behind her wistful smile. He responds with a kiss to her nose. She sighs out of contentment… and along with it comes out another, bothersome, thought.

“Three years. _Three years_ ,” she enunciates, the time of it so devastating as to crush the words themselves. “None of this explains why I couldn’t feel you. I went to Ahch-To, to the cave, thinking maybe- this time- it would show me something. There was nothing. In the Force, not even a whisper of you. Our bond-”

Ben reaches for her again, his hand tracing the creases of worry on her brow. Every neuron in her body jolts, billions of live wires electrifying at the simplest touch of fingertips. There is no more need for visions, but her sight does feel a hundred times clearer, more solid. She sees Ben nod gently, reassuringly. And it reminds her.

“It’s still here.”

Rey draws comfort from that, and strength. Still, her mind twists and turns with worry. “But for a time, it wasn’t. It was… empty. Do you suspect-” Rey frowns, and Ben sets to work soothing her- stroking her hair and cheek. She swallows the worry down, but it sticks to her throat like sand. “Did they bring you back for-”

“I don’t care.” Ben rolls his eyes, casually shrugging off any and all bad omens.

“But what if there’s something-”

“I don’t care.”

He won’t back down from it, eyes firmly placed on her and her alone, and his embrace increasingly solid. Permanent. He’s determined to enjoy their moment together, and to make it stretch into more moments, and more beyond that.

His determination for the now makes Rey’s mind wander out of the embrace, right into the moments before now- to Peli’s begrudged comments about Ben’s life… or lack thereof.

“Yes, you do.” Rey knows Ben well enough, knows well enough the fervor with which he kissed her before and the longing he feels to know he cares. He cares deeply. “It’s why you were here all this time. Waiting.”

Ben’s shrug transfers up to his eyebrows this time, and he looks down fleetingly to collect the right words from the ground. He grimaces. “I wasn’t just wasting away in the desert, if that’s what you’re worried about. I found an… alternate purpose. Apparently, I’m pretty good at fixing things.”

He sounds proud of himself but, endearing as it is, Rey can only give a very temporary smirk. “Almost as good as me?”

Ben concedes with a quiet huff of a laugh. “Almost.”

And he was almost in the clear. Almost. Rey’s smirk recedes back into concern. “But you were waiting. Ben-”

“I was waiting for you.” He yanks out the final stitch, without once flinching. “Whether or not you’d come… I knew the Force- my mother, whoever- they brought me here for a reason. I know now, without a doubt, they brought me back for you.”

Rey makes a face and shifts her weight on Ben’s lap to face him directly. “For _me?_ ”

“Why else?”

“For _you_ .” Rey’s mouth has a horrible taste in it- a bitter one, a sour foul thing. It’s the thought of Ben ever letting himself rot in such a lukewarm destiny. Her stomach churns. “I want to believe they brought you back to live- not for me or anyone else- but _for you_.”

Ben takes a deep breath, and almost manages to disguise his tepid shrug with a sigh. “Let’s agree to disagree.”

“No,” she immediately shoots, eyeing his shoulders with sharp disapproval. She glares at them as if they were the source of all his problems, and in a way they were: he let them carry too much weight. She can almost see all the burden pressing down on his shoulders. She grabs a hold of them, and holds Ben’s eyes with an equal amount of severity. “I need to know they did it to balance the scales. After failing to protect you on Exegol-”

“Rey.” Ben stops her with a subtle shake of his head. “They didn’t need to protect me. I don’t think I even wanted them to. I wanted to know I could do what was needed, on my own. For you. Not for anyone else, but you.” 

Her grip on his shoulders lessens, and there is a pause in which he waits for her to breathe easier, less fumes and more air. And then he eases in the logic. “Rey, you know I couldn’t have returned with you to the Resistance.”

“You could have!” She immediately puffs up, dropping her arms between them. “I would have protected you- like Leia would have-”

“She did.” Ben’s hands come to rest on Rey’s shoulders now, only briefly before sliding down her arms and guiding the frustration right out of her. He trails further down until his hands hold hers. She looks down at them, and remembers. 

“In the best way my mother could, she protected me. There’s no doubt in my mind she was in charge of leading me elsewhere and giving me time to heal and repent without the politics of a new government. We both know, had she been alive, she would’ve had to serve justice. Even to her son. And no matter what, you wouldn’t have had the power to stop the natural course of things.”

Rey actually snorts, and rolls her eyes. “Nothing about this is natural.”

“You’re telling me, Skywalker.”

“Shut up, Solo.”

She expects a laugh at that but, when she looks up, there’s a smile on his face she has not seen in a long time. And even then, it was not so close, and never quite like this. It’s halfway between a smirk and a promise. The back of her neck lights up, all live wires and wanting. The feeling sprawls down her spine.

“Is that an order? Or a request for something else?” Ben’s voice is exceptionally heavy and rich, and she sinks in the sound of it. Rey opens her mouth to taste it, smiling and leaning forward. The hands that were around hers aren’t there anymore. They have ghosted away and then are solid again on her back, dragging up her spine, chasing the feeling that still sings out from every cord.

She’s so glad she never let him put his shirt back on.

Ben, for once, is the one to lean in for the kiss-

There is a ear-splintering scream.

Chewie is back.


	3. For Touch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey has her mind set on Ben's next steps into her world, but there is a world he has lived in for years now that she has never seen. And, once again, it seems that their two worlds aren't meant to touch.

The Millennium Falcon’s cockpit has officially breached capacity. Chewie flails his arms about, and yells hysterically at the sight of Rey sitting on Ben Solo’s lap. The yelling and flailing is not helped one bit by the sight of Ben, blatantly alive and just as blatantly bare-chested.

“Can I have my shirt back, now?” 

Ben’s question is a blunt instrument, goading Rey in the side. Her lips roll between her teeth, and she bites down as she nods.

“Yep.”

Red-cheeked, Rey slinks off Ben’s lap. She grabs his discarded and crumpled shirt from the captain’s seat and briskly passes it to him- without making eye contact. With Ben, and definitely not with Chewie... who is very vocally and unwillingly making eye contact with a lot of things.

Rey tries to qualm the situation as Chewie finally aims his eyes and shouts at her. 

“I thought he was dead, too.” 

She stands up, forming a measly curtain between him and Ben; as though Chewie couldn’t just look over her head to see Ben haphazardly getting dressed. Thankfully for Ben, and not so much for Rey, Chewie is much more focused on scrutinizing _her_ at the moment. 

“I just found out- No, Chewie, we didn’t think about that- _Hey!_ It’s my cockpit, too-” 

Chewie’s horrified howl slaps like a heated prod against her cheek. Rey inflames. 

“Gross! That is not what I meant, and you know it!”

“Rey.” 

Ben’s hand touches gently at her shoulder, and it’s still so new and altogether bizarrely nostalgic- Rey stops to enjoy it. 

There’s something powerfully comforting about how Ben’s palm covers the entire length of her shoulder, how the subtle calluses on his fingertips massage tense muscles at her collarbone and in her chest. She sighs and, for a moment, everything is peacefully quiet.

Then, it just gets awkward. 

After all, despite Ben now being fully dressed behind her, there are three standing bodies in the cockpit; one of which had been presumed dead for three years. Chewie, in all his hairy height, is staring straight down at the hand Ben still maintains on using to touch Rey. Ben, in all his broad height, clearly witnesses the stare because his hold on her shoulder loosens and retreats to the small of her back. And all the while there’s Rey, sandwiched between Chewie and Ben and their towering bodies and tense history, feeling the absolute equivalent of a small pebble between a rock and a hard place.

Rey clears her throat.

“Chewie, Ben,” she starts and casually waves a hand backwards in mock introduction. “As you can see, _he is alive_ and has been for some time now. Ben, Chewie. As you can see, _he is upset_ and has been for some time now. The two of you should probably talk about all this, sooner rather than later.”

Not one of them even bothers to begin. Chewie has gone from staring at Ben’s hand to the floor. Head downcast, there’s a subtle back-and-forth shake of his head and a disgruntled, discrete whine muffled under layers of cowardly fur. Ben is silent behind her, but she can feel him nervously coiling into himself.

It’s absolute bantha fodder.

“Well then! I’ll leave you to it.” Rey takes a step to the side, and suddenly Ben’s hand is the thing coiling and clinging onto her shoulder again.

“Wait-” In spite of Ben’s trepidation, Rey dips from under his grip. “That’s not a good-”

At damn near lightspeed, Rey’s at the threshold, her palm flush on the cockpit door control. Ben is leaned slightly to the side of Chewie, trying to communicate with desperate eyes and a spasming of tiny flares across their bond. Panic is an endearing quality for Ben to have. Rey enjoys it a little too much as she lingers for a second, before pressing the control and sealing him inside with his estranged uncle.

The smile on Rey’s face is sanguine and heavy, as heavy as her hand still resting on the door control. Part of her wants to linger, to press her ear to the barrier and hear a relationship she’s never been privy to before. A universe of questions is instantly born and expand in her head, dying to be answered- from wondering what a familial reconciliation consists of to naively pondering about the most basic and painful unknowns: what does having an uncle, or having a nephew… well, what does that sound like? Is it full of quick, brotherly banter like between Chewie and Han? Or more outwardly affectionate like with Leia? Something between the two, or entirely unique?

Rey’s chest pulls her in, leans her mind into the barrier, longing to hear what family sounds like-

Another, more rational, and louder part scolds her and yanks her hand and body away from the door. Determined to give Chewie and Ben the space she promised when she sealed the kriffing cockpit, Rey turns-

Pain shoots up electric and blinding from her right foot. 

“ _MOTHER OF KW-_ ” 

Feral, but aware of the audience behind the door, Rey bites down on the curse and winces at her own inability to be discreet. However, her explicit volume is not exactly all her fault. Her toes have stubbed against something exponentially evil. 

There’s a clatter and rolling under Rey’s hissed breath. Her eyes lock on the suspects, hidden in a dark bag: the lightsabers she had previously dropped and forgotten. 

Any rage and physical pain she has immediately ejects into the vacuum of space. There is silence in her mind, a vastness as she bends down and reaches for the bag. 

What had she been meaning to do with the lightsabers before Ben’s return? 

Rey’s eyes travel to the nearby nook, the drawer, the place she’s kept them hidden in for so long. She reaches for it and pulls it open, but hesitates in putting the lightsabers back into their preserved space. But clearly they can’t stay out in the tunnel, stubbing toes and eliciting un-Jedi-like curses. So, reluctantly, she pulls them out of the bag and tucks them in beside the Jedi texts. However, on the opposite side of those texts lies another unsettling, unsettled matter: her own lightsaber. 

With its frame and grips scavenged from her old staff, it’s undeniably hers. Yet, when her fingers roam over the texts to it, they hover. Hesitant to touch. As Ben had been in facing his past with Chewie, Rey nervously coils in on herself. Her fingers curl inward, away from her past. Except she can’t quite escape it. 

Just like Luke and Leia’s lightsabers had, Rey’s hums in its sleep to her- singing still so as to be remembered. In spite of the fact that, like everything else buried in the coffin-shaped drawer, it is meant to be forgotten. 

Rey can no longer pretend to be any good at forgetting. 

She lifts her lightsaber from its resting place and allows herself to register the weight of it in her hand again. If Rey holds it right, there’s a comforting balance to it. 

Too many times, she had held it wrong. 

Rey carries the unbalanced weight of it into the main hold, and she sits with it at the lounge. The lightsaber is placed down, and stared at where it lies on the hologame table. She’s not quite sure why she bothered taking it out if she wasn’t going to do anything with it. But then she hears the cockpit door breathing open, and she knows.

Ben emerges from the corridor and wordlessly sits down beside Rey. Except, there’s a calculated, weary distance between them on the ragged bench- if only so he can freely slouch and drop his long arms at his sides. Rey’s never seen him like this: head gracelessly pitched back, his eyes numbly banging holes into the already patchy ceiling. Explicitly exhausted. 

On a haggard exhale, Ben’s lips shakily peel apart. On a sharp inhale, his eyes snap shut as he plunges fingers into his hair. He tugs at the dark strands, until the curls and broad waves break and toss angrily about. It’s then Rey’s eye catches on his long grey sleeve and follows it down to his chest, noticing how Ben’s recently recovered shirt is now creased and covered in light and dark brown highlights. Hair. It takes very little prodding on her part to realize Ben’s mind is just as hairy. She doesn’t bother to rustle through the muddle of emotions or thoughts he is having, knowing full well he’ll tell her when he’s ready. And he is not ready, yet.

So, where words cannot be just yet, touch holds its place. 

Rey’s hand reaches, becomes a bridge between them, and makes its foundation on Ben’s thigh. Her palm and fingers rest there, softly holding on. And Rey feels it the moment Ben does- a gentle threading of his chaos into something understandable and understood. His relief is instant, and so is his response.

Ben’s hand reaches for hers, carefully wrapping around it until he’s all she feels. He holds her hand for a deep breath. And then he lifts her hand, and her skin lands upon Ben’s lips. With eyes closed, he kisses the back of her hand earnestly, and she can feel him spill and press into every rise and dip of her knuckles. And then he is kissing down the length of her bones, down to her wrist, before finally coming to rest with his cheek upon her. There is another exhale, from his and her lungs. Peace is shared between them.

When Ben’s eyes finally open, it is to see the well-worn dejarik board and the not-so-worn lightsaber lying on it.

“That’s new...ish.” 

It’s Ben’s quiet attempt to bring words into their communication, and Rey smiles for it. Her fingers fold over his hand, embracing it as hers. He looks to her, and his eyes aren’t so numb anymore.

“I made it, after the war. I couldn’t bear to use Leia’s, or the legacy saber, so I made my own,” she admits to Ben alone. “The process- reading the texts on how to build one, what to do, where to get a kyber- it helped keep my mind off things, kept me moving. It also kept me away from people-”

A telling creak and stomping cut her confession short- the kind of creaking and stomping that used to be accompanied by howls as panels fell under furry feet. But those feet don’t fall through the newly installed flooring. They stop someway down the corridor, and Ben and Rey both look to the empty main hold entrance. There’s a pause, and a grumble, before the feet turn from the cockpit tunnel and stomp left, and keep stomping left until Chewie’s dismay disappears into the engineering station. 

Ben’s curious expression at the interruption is, itself, disrupted by a spasm of realization, grief and regret. It’s felt not only in his eyes but in every nerve in his body, muscles wound and skin tight. But just like Chewie’s footsteps, the feeling fades somewhat; Ben takes a moment to breathe, to compose himself again, and squeezes Rey’s hand for comfort. And he’s back to her. Except. Ben lowers Rey’s hand back between them on the bench, and lets go. There is clear intention in Ben’s movements, as his hands retreat upon his knees, fingers curled in. Coiled in on himself. 

Ben averts his gaze from her, focuses back on the lightsaber. He swallows roughly.

“Have you had to use it?”

“A few times.” 

Rey adjusts where she sits; her posture is more formal, her manner more uneasy than she would like to be around Ben. But having him close off from her is new territory, and leaves her stranded and wholly unprepared. She tries her best to compose her expression, and shrugs off the unwelcome burden of disappointment.

“In those first months after Exegol, I had to use it. There were still remnants of The First Order to deal with, war criminals to bring in-” Rey tenses at the memory, at Ben’s knowing silence beside her. Rather than looking and confronting his expression, she turns her gaze to the dejarik board as well. She stares holes into it.

How many times had she tried to play dejarik with her friends after a mission, only to feel sick to her stomach at the barbaric violence of it and leave? Without having the courage to explain why to those oblivious, concerned friends? 

Rey winces.

“Not all of them went in peacefully, or at all.”

Ben waits, listening as she wrestles through the memories of fights, kills, losses of life her friends saw blindly as wins. And she, for a time, had seen it just the same.

“I used the lightsaber too freely,” she confesses, and the struggle she has with carrying her saber transfers to her hands. They grab at each other and twist bone, choke the bloodstream. More violence, unto herself this time. 

Ben’s eyes finally turn to Rey; she feels him, watching and seeing her completely. There’s frustration and comfort in knowing he sees her, and it urges her on. 

“I used it carelessly. And I- the whole time I built it, used it, I thought of making it _mine_ , finally something that was utterly mine- a- a-” The frustration builds and she turns her focus away from the table, the lightsaber and aims it all at Ben. “ _Oh, you know!_ You know what I mean- something that’s me, _outside of me-_ but I hadn’t really seen who I was yet… and then I did. I looked, just for a moment, and I had seen too much of myself. My…” 

Rey fumbles, her vision catching on a loose light brown hair on Ben’s sleeve. She frowns, and quiets. 

“My family. I saw too much of… _my family_ in me, and I thought I didn’t deserve this…”

Rey glances around, grappling with the sight of her new lightsaber placed in the middle of all the lovingly used and worn bits of the Millenium Falcon. It looks as out-of-place as she has felt in the past few years. There are plenty of new tidbits to the Falcon, hidden under the floorboards and in the engineering station where Chewie is inspecting the latest updates. Rey remembers being one of those tidbits, stowed away with Finn beneath the panels before being swiftly found by Han and Chewie… and welcomed home. But everywhere her eyes land now, she sees echoes of a family she never got to have. And for a time, she thought she didn’t-

“You do.”

At the comforting sound of Ben’s voice, her eyes return to his. And, though he won’t touch her, his gaze seems to do so despite him. Rather than closed, there is a closeness to how he looks at her now. It reminds her, intimately, of the night they had first sat and spoken to one another. Touched one another. And like then, he hears her heartbreak and reaches out to cup it and mend it. Any way he can. The way now is with his eyes, which shield and hold her in reverence- and frustration. It weighs on his expression and on his voice when he speaks.

“You deserve the life you want, Rey. That’s not a-”

“-I know.” 

Instinctively, Rey’s hand lurches forward to touch Ben’s- 

Immediately, she flinches back and casts a clipped glance down the corridor. No Chewie sounds or sightings. No reason not to touch, at least no visible one. Yet, Rey keeps her hands to herself and plants her eyes back on the dejarik board.

“I know that now, but then… not then. Especially not-” Rey grinds her teeth together, and sighs through flared nostrils. “Well, when I thought of you and everything that happened… the purpose behind the missions, the purpose I put onto this lightsaber and onto myself- it all became hollow. Hollowed by thoughts of you, stained by my own actions. I think everyone could sense it. Thinking back on it now, it’s why I distanced myself from them.”

There’s a pause, in which Rey moves her eyes aimlessly across the board’s black and white squares. She can feel Ben’s curiosity brewing, before it finally bubbles up and pops as carefully as it can.

“Do they know?”

“About me?” Rey scoffs at the board, and at herself. “No. I couldn’t even bring myself to tell Finn. I was too afraid of losing him, and everyone else. Even if it was just about the politics of the name, I…” 

She shakes her head, shakes something positive loose. A reason to smile, strained as it is. She turns to aim her smile, and reassurances, at Ben.

“But they know about you! I told them all I could- I _needed_ them to know. I needed that, at least.”

Ben uncoils just a little more, and replies to her smile with one of his own. It’s weary, and barely moves more than two muscles at the corners of his lips. But it’s something, at least. “I know.”

It is the littlest encouragement, the barest minimum, but Rey runs with it anyway. She has to. Her grin widens. “So, you know what comes next.”

What little encouragement Ben gave drops at the corners, and into a thick frown.

“Please don’t-” 

“You have to meet the friends- _Hey!_ ” Rey’s hand shoots out again, and this time grabs hold of Ben’s wrist as he slides off the bench. He stands, awkwardly held in place by Rey’s unforgiving grip- which he could, if he wanted to, shake off with ease. Instead, he just stares at her hand with a contorted, amused expression.

Throttled, and suspicious, Rey’s gaze narrows. “Where are you going?” 

“To locate the nearest pit to fall into.”

His dry, ill-meant words hit its target, and Rey’s hand unclasps with an appalled “ _really?_ ” 

Ben seizes the chance and is already moving down the corridor by the time Rey gathers her wits about her. She leaps up and scurries after him. 

“I’m coming with you,” she blurts, still trying to orient herself in the current tail-spin. Since when is Ben the one who leaves? 

“Rey,” he sighs, not even turning back to look at her, “Tatooine at night is not-”

She sprints past his long-legged strides and slides into his front view, and promptly- _purposefully_ \- blocks the boarding ramp. Ben’s hand lays limp on the controls for the ramp, and he eyes her in mild frustration. An expression, and excuse, Rey is more than willing to confront with a pointed, accusing finger.

“I have handled myself just fine in worse places and you know it, Ben Solo. Stop making excuses. I’m coming with you.”

No matter how meticulously Ben puts on a facade, his true nature always has a nasty habit of sneaking right through. He struggles to keep it in check, standing there in all his disgruntled and silent fashion, hand still swallowing the ramp controls whole yet not making a move to either disengage or engage. With his head bent down to look at her head-on, Rey can distinguish every shift in argument in his eyes- that is, until he catches on and lifts his chin and juts it towards the ceiling. Her vantage point is compromised.

However, she can still read him in other ways. 

Ben’s shoulders are tense and his jawline is more pronounced than usual. But then he takes a breath that fills up his chest and the entire entryway. He sighs, and all the tension goes- or at least, all that she can see. He deflates, allowing her to view past him to the corridor again. His shoulders slouch. He swallows and the lines on his neck and jaw smooth out. There is the telling hiss of a ramp opening and lowering behind her. Just as he finally lowers his head, in defeat.

Rey is all teeth and victory.

On leaving the Falcon, however, all her teeth vanish when Peli appears in her hangar window, ogling the odd pair that must be her and Ben. She had no idea Peli’s eyes could go any wider than they had already been before.

“I’m guessing Peli doesn’t know who you are,” Rey murmurs as she gives an awkward wave to the old woman. Ben’s wave seems more natural, and straight to the point- a short little salute to a colleague. Peli’s response is less than natural, as her eyebrows shoot off past her hairline. 

“She knows who I am now,” is Ben’s naturally vague response as they cross the darkened hangar to the exit. Once they’re past the doors, and out of possible earshot, he spares Rey the need to prod further. “I’m just Ben here. A mechanic. No family or family name.”

“I don’t think going by Solo would have done much harm to-”

Ben cuts her off with a snort. There’s an amused smirk tilting his face, in a familiar way she hasn’t seen on him- but someone much like him. “Solo would have done a lot of harm. Financial harm. My dad’s heroics may not be well-known here, or cared about, but his debts? They’re the stuff of legends.”

He has a point.

He also has very unfairly elongated legs, sending him bounds ahead of her as they walk through the discarded desert streets of Mos Eisley. In the space Ben has put between them, Rey can see the city differently at night than in the day. Three moons align in the sky, vigilantly outlining rounded and robust buildings. Dimly lit doorways cast a gold, sanded hue on the walls and reveal the occasional scattering of civilians, who appear and disappear into shadowed alleys or through private thresholds. Some hooded figures with aged, historic hands, appear camouflaged and crouched upon closer inspection of the hardened, sandstone buildings. It becomes more clear in the dark that the walls of this city, thick and bland as they are, have ancient eyes and ears. They also have the occasional bored, nosey, drunken bodies wandering the night for fun and mischief. Neither of these facts make it any easier for Rey to have an honest conversation with Ben- and he is fully, annoyingly aware of this. 

Still, Rey barrels on and takes long, persistent strides to keep up with Ben’s equally determined gait. She manages to gain on him, and hops in front, opting to walk backwards if it means making him slow down- and especially if it means making him look at her. Ben, seeing her ploy, cocks an eyebrow but otherwise submits. With the small mission successful, she persists with the grand plan. 

“So, why not use the name Organa?”

“Political debts.”

Now she’s the one raising an eyebrow. “Yours or Leia’s?”

There’s a glimmer of a smile at that one. He shrugs. “Both.”

“Well that’s- Oh!” Rey jolts at the tap of something stern and cold at her back. It doesn’t budge. Ben does. He keeps walking, purposefully stepping into her limited space with a very coy, and gloating expression. His hand rises, looming towards her left cheek-

His hand lands, and presses flat on the surface next to her. An airlock door. Behind it is a bubbling of sound- not all of them pleasant to the ears. There is a shattering of glass, outcries, a riot of carefree music and vulgar confrontations, and her head fills with the dangerous collaged image of unknowns and run-of-the-mill vagabond characters. It’s the image of a cantina, like any other, and a place of little interest to her. It’s behind her, and what’s in front of her holds much more of her attention. 

It’s just Ben, filling up the alcove, his body swallowing the space and his eyes offering up night to her. There are two faint stars in his gaze, directly above her. And, even when he doesn’t mean to, Ben bends for the light, letting in enough of the moons’ glow over his shoulders to catch the detailing in his smirk. The faint light reveals him, highlighting the heaviness on his bottom lip as that Solo cockiness wavers and threatens to give way to something much more honest and vulnerable.

“This is my pit. Still want to join me?”

Rey’s the one who opens the door. 

Light and sound flood out and surround the two of them. Ben’s face is instantly and completely revealed to her- smirk blinded and bright brown eyes wide in shock and, dare she hope for it: terror.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Rey challenges with her own, fully committed smirk. Her sight is set on him, and it’s not wavering either. Except… she does have to eventually turn around and walk into the cantina. 

When Rey does finally turn around, it’s nothing and everything like she imagined it would be. There’s no doubt in her mind this is where Chewie trudged off to; there is also no doubt in her mind the history she’s just ploughed over by stepping into the dimly lit tavern. Of course, no one besides her seems to even acknowledge where they stand, or lounge, in the bleak surroundings with miscellaneous drinks and mischievous intentions. Everyone inside Chalmun’s Cantina is here specifically because it is a page fallen out of history, because they too want to fall away. If only for a round or two of ale.

When Rey settles into place at the bar, ale is the farthest thing from her mind. She promptly waves over the Gran bartender. For a moment, he assesses her from the end of the horseshoe bend. Three sets of eyes scan up and down her white apparel, innocently bunned hair, and unmarred face… and his nostrils expand into amused O’s before ungraciously snorting at her. Rey’s face hardens.

“Sarlacc kicker,” she stubbornly and loudly huffs back at him. After a second of pursed lips and puffed chest, she slips out a compulsory: “please.”

Thankfully, Ben is too busy having his own internal argument at the doorway to witness her pathetic performance at the bar. He seems winded by her movement, and takes more time than is necessary for a man of his stature to sidle up beside her. What doesn’t take much time at all is everyone else’s reactions to him. Immediately, eyes at the bar snap onto him- like animals at a watering hole- and bodies begin to silently wiggle and shove others on his behalf to make space.

Apparently, Ben frequently falls into this particular pit.

When the bartender finally makes his way down the counter with Rey’s drink, he stops short of handing it to her. All three of his eyes promptly and expectantly turn to the large, looming man.

“What’ll it be this time?” the bartender shoots, and there’s a history behind that ‘time’. “An open tab for junkos?”

Ben, snugly fitting into the scene, doesn’t bother with greetings. He plants his arms on the bar, and cuts to the quick: “there’s Starfire ‘skee in the back. Biala set it aside for me.”

There’s another snort, and a three-tiered eye-roll before the bartender throws a loaded “of course she did,” and disappears in the smoke. With Rey’s drink still stuck to his hand.

She glares blasters into the Gran’s back. Her mental aim, though, is towards the very human man beside her. 

“Who’s Biala?”

“She’s a booze supplier, usually unloads in my hangar.” Ben blindly and bluntly lists facts, his thumb mindlessly tapping at the bar as he eyes the city of drinks on the counter across from them. There are all kinds of death-defying, death-inducing, and dumb concoctions lined up on shelves and even bubbling down from pipes. Part of the thanks for such a variety goes to the Republic’s attempts to broaden and free trade routes, but most of it lies in the naturally insatiable thirst of desert planets for anything equal parts liquid and fire. And yet what the cantina already offers is just not enough to sate Ben Solo.

“So, what?” Rey inspects, turning to point her blasters at Ben once the bartender is gone behind a wall. “As thanks for getting to _unload,_ she puts out special drinks for you?”

That gets Ben’s attention away from the alcohol, eyes tripping over themselves to look at her. And just like that, they’re back in familiar territory. He’s doing that thing with his eyebrows: the pinched, pained and frustrated expression he goes through when she says something and clearly means something else entirely. As he always does, he tries his best to decode it. All the while, he’s completely incapable of hiding how annoyed and confused he is by her relentless inability to speak honestly; it makes two of them. Still, she’s too stubborn to elaborate and too irked by Ben’s obliviousness to care about his suffering. So, Ben’s mind whirls away as he searches for clues in Rey’s expression and, just as the bartender arrives and slides over both of their drinks, Ben’s eyebrows launch upwards and his lips pop apart in a silent “oh.” 

His drink nearly slides right off the bar.

Rey catches them both, and thankfully the bartender does better than to slide over the clay jorum he’s holding. Dumbfounded, Ben continues to stare at her even as the bartender places the jorum beside him. Even as Rey meticulously places the glass of Biala’s precious ‘skee into his open hand.

The cool touch seems to revive him, and his lips finally make another, more verbal shape.

“She unloads _shipments_ , often complains about the lack of variety, and sometimes I end up giving suggestions. As thanks for _increasing her profit_ , she brought a rare drink I can’t get here. It’s hardly more than a business transaction.” 

After the initial shock is oiled off his gears, Ben’s voice has shifted right back into one of its more provoking forms: a heavy hammer, flattening truth into absolute banality. He may not always intend for it to annoy the doshing lights out of her, but it does. And Rey’s cogs are also well oiled and ready to roll her eyes. Ben watches her do so, and follows every other agitated movement as she takes a generous swig from her orange glass.

The Sarlacc kicker does its job, hitting the back of Rey’s throat with two feet; one is dry heat and the other is bitter as hell. Keenly aware of Ben’s hyper-focus, She tries not to make a face.

She’s not very successful; Ben grins, and teases. “So, when did you start drinking?”

She scowls. “When did you?”

“Later than I should’ve, apparently.”

Lifting his drink up, the glass touches Ben’s grin and distorts it. Rey can see right through the clear crystal, right to the disparaging contrast between Ben’s lips and the brown, muddy substance. It rattles her, but not him. Ben shoots the dark liquid back with practiced ease. And, on cue, his warped grin cringes into a grimace as the alcohol burns down the arched length of his throat. There’s no way something that looks that harsh can taste kind. Yet, he shrugs and reaches for the jorum of ‘skee the bartender just _had to_ put beside him. He pours another round. 

Though the Sarlacc is still kicking at her, and there’s still half a glass left of it, Rey swallows down the sour aftertaste. She focuses on what matters, what drove them here: “why did you leave the ship?”

Ben downs the second glass even faster than the first. “Because I needed a drink.”

“Everyone knows there’s a not-so-hidden stash of booze-”

“I needed to get away,” Ben explains begrudgingly, “and have a drink.”

He continues the loop of pouring and drinking, and pouring again. There is no longer a grimace when the poison hits. His movements aren’t so determined anymore. If she did not know him the way she did, his profile would blend into the crowd and creed of the cantina. It does not take too many pours for her to figure out: that’s the point of falling in this pit. And her gut hates it, twists against the thought of Ben being a shadow all day just to become a silhouette at night, too. Yet, there’s something mesmerizing about the fall... 

Languidly, Ben’s head hangs back as the last shot burns a hole in the roof of his mouth, simmering and dripping through blood and bone to relax his thoughts. The strain he’s had in all his muscles is gradually pulled loose, in a different way than when she held his hand before; there’s a smoothness to his cheeks and brow, a seamless elegance to the curved line she follows from his forehead down to his chest. He isn’t healed, but pleasantly numbed. The effect ripples like heat waves from Ben and into Rey, pushing her lungs down with heavy breaths and drying her tongue, encouraging her to search out a haven in the curved rim of her glass, in the firm taste of her drink- or, better yet, in the curve of Ben’s neck and firmness of his lips-

Rey can understand perfectly why Ben closes his eyes and sighs into the dazed oasis. 

She nearly caves into the bonded feeling, her hand clutched at her own drink. But there’s still a kick, now kicking stoutly at her ribs.

“You left, because you wanted to avoid the conversation about my friends.”

Slowly, Ben returns; his neck reels upright again, his mind pulled out of the alcohol long enough for his expression to twitch in acknowledgement of reality. He scowls into the jorum. “That too.”

“Why?”

“You already know-”

“I want you to say it.”

The words come out as an order, and Rey blames the Sarlacc kicker for the brunt tone. Mostly. But Ben turns away from the ‘skee, barely needing to read her for even a blink before he understands the real reason for the command. He’s heard that tone before, felt it bubble up and burst out of his own mouth. Its familiarity, echoing back at him, sobers him enough to give her what she needs.

Turning his body towards her, Ben detaches himself from the background of strangers and instantly becomes her entire forefront.

“I love you, Rey. I would, and already have died for you.”

He takes a step closer to her, giving only enough space for their drinks to sit between them on the counter; the reasonable amount of space between two people at a bar. It’s a reasonable amount, yet Rey despises it; she fights the urge to close the distance completely, public decency be damned. Ben’s lips seem to hint towards the same sentiment, curling up at the sight of Rey glancing at the other patrons- inspecting to see if anyone cares about their affairs. He knows better than most how little anyone in Chalmun’s Cantina care for public displays of any kind of emotion. He knows, and yet. 

Ben flicks a switch and he’s turned back to the counter, with jorum in hand. “That being said: I despise your friends.”

The tantalizing whiplash has Rey gawking. “No, you don’t! You don’t even know them.”

“No,” Ben shakes his head, pours himself yet another drink, and chuckles curtly. “You just don’t know them the way I do. Oh, and I’m sure they believe to know me _very well_.”

“I told them you saved me.”

After one glance at Rey’s sincere desperation and hopefulness, Ben immediately inhales the ‘skee. The mind-relaxing effects don’t register the way they should, and his head hangs heavy with exhaustion. His jaw clenches, teeth barring back the truth. Rey can feel him struggle, grinding against rock and sand, before he finally says what she should already know:

“That doesn’t negate the other things I did, Rey.”

“You’re right. It doesn’t. That’s why you need to meet them.”

Somewhere in the back, a crate of bottles fall. Glasses break.

An intrusive clattering of drinks, celebratory and destructive, surround Rey and Ben. As though to taunt them, the bar continues in a constant cycle of uproar in one secluded corner or another with enemies clashing, drunkards being exiled and shoved through the door, and friends rambunctiously laughing at stories no one knows but them. Just as no one knows the story shared between her and him. There is a silence in the story now, a tense thread tied to the two and hanging in the space between- still, untouched by the sound waves that rattle every other particle in the cantina. The thread pulls tighter as the cantina continues to rattle; the space between them is determined to stay silent. The strain is painful. And the cantina laughs at their struggle.

“You know I’m right.”

Rey watches the bones of Ben’s hand protrude like cell bars around his empty glass. His other hand is coiled around the jorum’s handle. He fights the urge to break things, to drown the good in him. 

After finally finishing off her kicker in one bracing swig, Rey boldly reaches for the jorum’s base and pulls it away from Ben; his hand is rusty around the handle, but eventually unlatches.

She pours them both a glass of equal parts liquid courage and crutch.

“So.” Rey plants the jorum between them, and lifts her own glass to her lips. She eyes Ben’s suspicious gaze over the rim. “How did it go with Chewie?”

Rey tips back the ‘skee and immediately regrets it. Her face contorts, and the glass nearly shatters in her grip. If she wanted this kind of pain, she would let someone graze her throat with her own saber.

Her eyes are closed, but she can see Ben chuckling, the sound of it muffled and smoothed in the confines of his own glass. When her eyes are functioning again, she spots him refilling already. He teasingly aims the spout towards her and her body instinctively revolts, teeth gnashed in disgust… yet, she leans her glass in for another round. 

There’s a sweet residue at the back of her mouth, hanging onto her palate for dear life- a strange, masochistic delight. 

The corner of Ben’s mouth twitches with amusement, and he pours the ‘skee into her glass. He finally answers her.

“I don’t expect Chewie to suffocate me in my sleep. But. I won’t be surprised if he sheds into my food every once in a while.”

“ _Ben_.”

He sighs, and swirls the murky liquid around. It laps up angrily. To calm the rage, he swallows the waves. 

“He’s upset I let him think I was dead,” he explains to the now empty glass. “He’s upset about a lot of things. There were… words said. There were bones crushed.”

Rey’s ribs are bruised by a swelling in her chest. “He missed you that much, huh?”

There’s a reflection of love, blurry as it is, at the bottom of Ben’s glass. “... I missed him, too.”

Her glass is still full, his empty, and the sweetness hums still at the back of her mouth. It’s a faint taste, begging to be explored. Rey stares into her glass, at the darkness that hides a rare gentleness. She takes a sip this time, letting the taste slowly drip down her tongue. It’s fire all over again, assaulting her taste buds and demanding she spit it back out. But she lets it stay instead, and the rage of it subdues, smooths out into a cooling blanket over her tongue, and there is that sweetness again she can’t quite place. It’s a taste of somewhere she’s never been before. 

It’s a rare drink, indeed. And Ben sought it out for a reason. Yet, he could not leave Tatooine to find it for himself. He still won’t leave.

The sweetness numbs. Rey swallows, puts the glass down. Ben is still staring into his.

“What’s keeping you here, Ben?”

The question seems to echo in Ben’s glass. His eyes narrow slightly, eyebrows drawn down in pensivity. Confusion. He puts the glass down, and turns to Rey with his mouth parted around an answer- 

His eyes latch onto something to her left. His expression softens, hazy from alcohol and curiosity. Just as hazily, his hand reaches out, and suddenly his thumb is grazing the edge of her jaw, and his broad fingertips are brushing against her neck. They curl, tickling and kindling her, and then his hand is drifting downward. Knuckles faintly trail one after the other over her collarbone, over chest and clothing- and she glances down to see a small cluster of her hair curled into his palm. He runs his thumb over it until the length is fully traveled- landing effortlessly upon her sternum. His hand lingers.

It’s only then she remembers how long she had let her hair grow.

Rey’s breaths deepen; her chest sinks away only to rise right back up and touch the back of Ben’s fingers. She watches as her touch stirs him to motion, his fingers curling in again as if clutching something unseen. Wanting to know what it is, she raises her sight to Ben’s eyes. His dark pupils are drunkenly wide and wanting, and moving now too. Slowly, they drift up the waves of her hair, up to her ear, to her cheek where his vision fills with freckles and deepening blush. His mouth, still parted, lifts at the corners but drags heavy in the middle- as if pulled down to her- 

Ben’s eyes finally come to shore on hers. Rey sees the answer, bright as sunlight in the gold of his irises. Yet, the words still cling to the cliff of his tongue.

So, she tries to push it off. She tilts her head up, close enough now to taste the answer to her question: “what’s keeping you here?”

Ben’s hand still rests curled upon her chest, his eyes on hers, and he feels closer than he’s ever been since leaving the Falcon. But there’s still a tension, a pull in the string tying them together, pulling parts of the truth back into himself when he finally admits:

“Not much.”

Rey’s hand grabs hold of his and there is a quiver in his expression, in the string. She leans in, laxing and instantaneously changing the tension. With a gentle stretch of her neck, she could kiss him. By the downward drag of Ben’s adam’s apple, she knows his wants and hers are one and the same. So, she dares to say it:

“Come with me.”

His eyes flit down to her lips, further still to her hand around his. She can still feel him gently tugging away in fear. But it’s lackluster now. So, she continues.

“I’m scheduled to meet Finn and the others tomorrow to drop off an order-” 

It’s already a mistake, Ben’s eyes wincing closed at the mention of Finn. He’s shaking his head, but she’s too far in to give up. Desperately, Rey grabs Ben’s hand with both of hers, tugging him in to her chest, hooking him beneath her chin and making her hold of him more secure. 

“It’s not going to be a surprise, or even a special thing! So there won’t be any welcoming committee or crowds. Just me, doing a routine drop-off! The only difference is you’ll be with me.”

“That’s a big difference.”

Though Ben doesn’t retract his hand from hers, his eyes and mind return to the bar. Her hold on him threatens to come apart.

“Is it too big of a difference?”

Ben evades answering by taking Rey’s drink and downing it. His arm laxes and drips downward, off her chest. She holds on, their hands joined but hanging between them.

“What if I only asked you to join me for a supply run? Just you, me and Chewie. No whiff of friends or the Republic.” Rey persists, her eyes hounding Ben’s expression for the reasons he won’t verbally give for refusing her. “If I asked you to come with me, would you?”

His hand squeezes hers. “You already know the answer to that.”

Yet, Ben still maintains eye contact with a jorum of alcohol. Not her.

“You are exactly like your father.”

Predictably, Ben retracts from the electric jolt of comparison. His hand tears away from hers and immediately seeks liquid ailment. 

“Ah, I see,” Ben drips acidically. “You spent a few days with my father, a few days with me, and now you know everything there is to know about us Solos. Good for you.”

He grabs at the jorum, readying to pour-

Rey’s freed hand flicks out and the jorum lurches from Ben’s grasp. It does a suicidal cliff jump off the bar. Ben, wide-eyed and instinctive, reaches forward- and the jorum freezes mid-air, ‘skee painting a muddy arch from the spout and down to where it should have splashed all over the counter and floor. 

For once, the cantina is completely quiet and captivated by the actions of an individual. 

Having been on a desert planet, Ben had gained some color for his skin- a light sanding of gold in his complexion to help him camouflage better. Now, it drains right out of him, and threatens to reveal who he was to all the patrons of Tatooine who thought they didn’t need to know him at all.

Jaw clenched and grinding down on swears, Ben relaxes his clawed hand and eases his arm back. The jorum tilts upright, with the ‘skee not-so-discreetly slurped back into it. The bartender, having looked on with two-eyes full of dread and one full of bewilderment, warily reaches out and grabs his property from where it continues to conspicuously float. 

The second all evidence of the Force at work is swept under the rug, the cantina hesitantly refills with mindless banter. But there are still glances, and whispers, of the broad man who jedi-mind-tricked a jug of alcohol. Ben scowls and snaps forward, head-diving and landing on the bar.

“I think it’s time for the open tab of junkos, Sal.”

“No.” Rey glares at the bartender. Sal narrows all three eyes at her, but is already off with the ‘skee. There is bordering-on-unhealthy suspicion and fear towards force-sensitive people here, which works in her favor. Just not Ben’s. Not now. 

“It’s time to take you home.”

At the tug of Rey’s hands on his upper arm, Ben groans and grumbles. He turns his head, grinding his forehead into his fists. “And where would that be?”

Rather than entertain his sarcasm with an answer, Rey tugs at him again and manages to detach him from the bar- if only due to his own embarrassment. Curious eyes follow them out of the cantina, making Ben stiff beside her. However, the second the door shuts behind them and the cool night air hits his blood, Ben finally lets go.

He leans into her, all long limbs and lazy saunter. Clearly, she made the right call in throttling the ‘skee away when she had. But she’s pretty glad for the amount he’s consumed. It makes the task of slinging his arm over her shoulder, and steering him much easier. Or so she hopes.

“Hey, woah-” Ben’s heels slide in the sand as they come up upon Peli’s docking bay. “My hangar is…” He swivels his head. After a moment of consternation, the arm hung on her shoulder swings up and to the left. “There.”

“That’s good to know. We’re not going there.”

Without bothering to explain any further, despite the confused look on his face, Rey grabs his arm and yanks it back down to her shoulder. Firmly gripped, she uses his arm as her own personal control yoke and shifts them back on course for Peli’s hangar. Realizing her goal, Ben’s feet grind harder into the ground. 

It’s unfair how easily his weight and stature work against her.

“Rey,” his voice, sobering and somber, manages to weigh them both down even more. “I shouldn’t-”

With an annoyed huff, she grips his arm harder and snaps her head up to look at him. There is the urge to use her other hand, pressed determinately on his back, to shove him forward. But the fearful look in his eyes is a familiar one. It borders a fine line between childlike and war-worn. It warns her to take caution. Rey softens. 

“I told you who the Falcon belongs to. And you belong there. We’re going home. So, just come with me. Please?”

The last word hits harder, and faster, than any alcohol in the galaxy can. Ben’s feet uproot from Tatooine’s soil, and carefully follow as Rey leads him back to the Millennium Falcon. As they step up the ramp and seal themselves in for the night, Ben’s arm tenses around her; his muscles spasm against her neck, and his side is stone against hers. 

They both know where Chewie is at this time of night, resting in front of the dejarik board or already dozing in his bunk. 

The only available place for Ben to sleep is in the main hold, too. No doubt the image of it pops into Ben’s head the same moment it does in Rey’s. It is curved, small, dusty, and located above the lounge. It might as well be located inside The Maw.

Rey steers them both clear of that hell, and to the left. Ben’s arm relaxes, but she’s not so sure it’s because their destination is any less traumatic. 

There is a drunken hum lazily dancing across Ben’s skin and tickling hers. For the remaining few steps down the tunnel, Ben is too buzzed and relieved to be avoiding Chewie to invest much worry into where he’s headed. That is, until they get to a sealed door. 

His feet are heavy again, more solid here than on sand, and Rey knows for a fact the panels in this area have not been replaced. Perhaps Ben would rather fall through the Millennium Falcon floors than have to step through this particular doorway.

“I only just started sleeping here. For a while, both Chewie and I slept in the main hold since I couldn’t convince him to move in here,” Rey mentions as she reaches for the door’s key pad. As if that knowledge would ease the coiling at her side. Ben is deathly silent as the door opens. 

Rey steps into the captain’s quarters. Ben doesn’t. He lingers at the threshold like a ghost, swaying slightly from side to side and eyes hollowly floating over the space. It has not changed much in the years, with the barest hint of Rey’s existence peeking out of corners; white cotton wrappings hanging off the small galley, and a singular hair brush just beside them. Everything else feels preserved, frozen in time. Waiting.

“Well?” Rey turns to Ben, and watches him expectantly. But not too expectantly, and she tries her damndest not to look too hopeful, or too discouraged. It’s a fine line to tread. Especially with him.

Ben must see one or the other, or both emotions flit across her face. He wrestles with a frown and finally gives in, takes two broad steps into the room and directly sits himself upon the bed. The movement, the room, Rey’s presence- all of it- seems to dizzy him; his hands sluggishly move to brace his head against the onslaught and his eyes close. 

Guilt and regret are his bed fellows, and hers too. They make a home in her gut and lay down heavy for the night. Maybe they should have gone to his hangar after all.

Quietly, Rey approaches the bed and grabs her spare shirt from atop the pillow. Ben doesn’t move at her nearness, just focuses on breathing in and out. The closer she gets to him, the more the world spins. 

“Ben,” she calls out carefully, “just lie down. Get some rest. I’ll change and go.”

His world is still spinning. So, she turns away, pocketing herself by the galley, and focuses on what she can change- her clothes. Hesitantly, blindingly aware of Ben just steps away from her, she unlatches her belt and places it on the stool. She undoes the leather and cloth straps around her arms and grabs the wrappings from her shoulders. After a pause, she slips them off, feeling something else slip:

Ben. 

There is a dull thud. Rey peeks over her shoulder, and spots what she thought she wanted: Ben, laid down on the bed. His eyes are closed, his breath steadying and body trying to relax upon the sheets. But he’s too rigid, and off in the corner, and the grey sheets under him are cold. Flat. Suddenly, they are made of stone. And the bed’s overhead light casts a blue hue. Ben looks pale. He looks-

Rey’s hand clenches around cloth, and nails dig into her skin. Her vision sharpens, rectifies itself. Ben’s chest rises on a breath, and falls, and rises again. His brow creases with frustration, and other emotions she has tried to tiptoe around for his sake- and her own. But the memory of Exegol is burned onto her retinas, and returns to her whenever she simply closes her eyes to blink. So.

Hastily, Rey undoes the buns in her hair and kicks off her boots. Just as impulsively, she slides under the covers. At the tug of sheets and rush of the bed shifting under him, Ben’s eyes open. He turns his head on the pillow to look at Rey, ever so casually settling in beside him. There’s still the haze of alcohol and desert nights on his breath when he speaks.

“You didn’t change.”

Rey turns her head on the pillow, and swallows back the fear of seeing him like this. She has seen him lie beside her only once before, and the bruises and blood of that night ghost into this one. Rey blinks away the past, and tries to focus on the now. 

“I’m not going, either.”

They lie in her words for a moment, and she can feel Ben’s spinning begin to truly slow with each of her exhales. It slows down to a gentle dance, with his eyes observing her all the while and his body rested beside hers. They are alone now, not even the company of ghosts between them. And the change changes him. Frees him.

He moves, a hand reaching, a subtle shift that does its best not to disturb the balance between them. He touches her hair, analyzing and admiring the length and exposure of it against the pillow. His touch moves again, to her cheek, and it is light- unburdened by thoughts or worries. The dancing comes to a standstill in his head, and the song the cantina has looped and hummed around him stops. It changes tune, and demands a different kind of dance.

Ben leans across the small divide, and kisses Rey; the balance beneath them ripples. Ripples move through Rey, from where his lips brush over hers slowly. He presses down, engulfing her upper lip, gently suckling and savoring just as she savors the faint wetness and ample softness of his kiss. This one is different, much different, from the ones before. This is his kiss to her, given only at the right time, with the right feeling, with all the desire for more and more of both. The desire is mutual.

His lips unfold from hers reluctantly, skin clinging to hers even as it moves away. As the weight of Ben’s bottom lip threatens to leave hers wanting, Rey latches onto it and draws out the kiss for longer- remaining even as both of their lips part to breathe. When she opens her eyes, it is to find Ben right there, his dark lashes making it almost impossible to see his yearning. Almost. Even if she could not see it, she feels it in the rough pressure of his fingers on her cheek- as he struggles against the instinct to pull her closer. As he has done all night, for reasons he still isn’t ready to share. 

So, Rey does it for him.

She seizes him by the back of his neck and pulls him in, draping him over her, and it is more than enough encouragement. He happily kisses her again, exploring her mouth as it opens in a sigh and speaks with the tip of her tongue at his lip. She can taste ‘skee and skin, and Ben decides to taste her right back. Whatever he tastes leaves him breathless, and takes her breath too, and half of their kisses are damp lips haphazardly touching during sighing intermissions. And some of his kisses dance elsewhere: at the corner of her mouth, or slipping down her jaw, and she encourages the movements by curling and digging her fingers into the thick of Ben’s hair. And Ben’s hand finally begins to play its part, shifting down from her cheek to her neck, heatedly printing upon her chest and dragging over to her shoulder, pressing her into the bed-

Ben’s fingers touch upon the risen scar on her upper arm, and the kiss aimed for her lips halts in mid-air. Ben turns his head to where his hand lies. For a second, he just observes; the memory of the flesh wound comes back as drips of fire in his mind. The fire burns into a realization and his fingers flinch away in remembered pain of that fight, of that separation. Yet, just as quickly as they retracted, his fingers return to trace over one of the marred lines. He pauses at the end of it, and stares at the space between the lines. Rey wonders if he sees what she has seen in it; she worries if he knows why she has hidden it so long under layers of hardened leather.

Of course he sees. Of course he knows. And because he does, Ben’s next kiss is given to her scar. And though she cannot taste it, Rey can feel that hidden sweetness from the Starfire ‘skee on his lips. It lovingly sinks into the damaged tissue and heals the wound underneath. The sweetness continues to drip, down her arm as Ben’s kisses travel the length of it. 

The tone of Ben’s affections have changed again, and Rey’s lips curl between her teeth. There is an odd taste of frustration and amusement trapped in her mouth.

With Rey’s hand still selfishly and determinately hooked into the soft dark locks of hair, Ben ends up curled over her by the time he gets to kiss her wrist. And, with one final turn of Ben’s head, Rey’s hand is cradling his kiss. His lips rest there, his eyes closed and so serene that he could almost trick her into believing he was fast asleep. But then he breathes out in a sigh, takes her hand in his, and eases his head down. Just beneath her right lung. In some unfathomable way, his presence there alleviates an unseen weight. 

Rey lifts her free hand and tenderly rests it on the crown of his head. They each let out a breath of pure release. All the things that had happened, and all the words said or left unknown, are sighed out and left to the air to keep for another breath. At another time. 

But something remains in Ben’s lungs. She can feel it, shifting the weight on the bed until it is rising like a wave into his throat-

“I’ll meet your friends.” The peace of lying with her, of hearing her breathe and feeling her fingers brush through his hair, gives Ben the courage to say what needs to be said. 

“But,” what lingers of the alcohol also gives Ben courage. “If I die again, I refuse to come back.”

“Fair enough.”

Rey stares a moment longer at the sight of Ben curled up, all limbs and alive and falling asleep upon her chest. She smiles softly, her lips pleasantly tired, and tries to keep her eyes open to continue seeing and feeling the weightlessness of them, together. But her eyelids are heavy, and there’s the promise of tomorrow. And there’s the promise of Ben’s kiss, and touch, wrapped around her like the warmest blanket.

Ben is fast asleep. His hand, still holding hers. Rey finally closes her eyes, and follows him to dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the reviews so far. They have been such a joy to read, and this continues to be a joy to write. I'm happy to have you along for the journey!


	4. For Forgiveness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After finally getting Ben back home on the Millennium Falcon and falling asleep in a dreamlike state with him beside her, Rey is forced to confront a nightmarish reality of fear, pain, and reflection.

Since Rey was a child, she had always dreamed of places. Not people. It was safer not to imagine figures around her in the shape of a mother, a father, or anything close to resembling a family. It was almost peaceful being alone, to follow her mind to far-off lands. Far away from Jakku. Her mind led her away from her heart, from all its beatings and bruises. Oh, how she would feel more alive and awake in dreams than in reality! In dreams, she dipped her toes into the waters of worlds and the universe rushed forward to be touched by her. Countless times, she felt the damp earth of Ahch-To hugging her fingers and awoke with crystals of sea salt still clinging to her cheeks. Until, that is, she did not let herself feel it anymore.

It had been two years since she last dreamed- of Ahch-To or any other planet. Disconnected, adrift, she slept in between stars and dreamt of nothing. Until now.

Now, the universe rushes back to be touched by her again. Water, constant in its motion, fills her sleeping ears with sound. The ocean surrounding Ahch-To surrounds her, too. Only… there are subtle, peaceful changes in this world, allowing her eyes to stay closed and her body to lie deeper into the earthly bed and rest. There are no harsh crashes of waves against jagged rocks, no violent surges in the current. The ocean rests with her, and her hand rests in something soft and finer than shimmersilk beside her. Rey combs through it, imagining the detailed rise and fall of Ben’s dark hair between her fingers- but her imagination is lacking, only able to picture him as she saw him in bed: a giant shadow curled around her in desperate need of sleep. In dreaming, with the morning sun warm and glowing upon her eyelids, she muses how light would change Ben. 

Rey only ever saw him in the dark, and the scavenger instinct had always wondered and whispered: what treasures would sunlight reveal in him? Would his hair and eyes continue to be caved in darkness, or would they illuminate like malab- glistening distant starlight? Or would they prefer to burn with the ruby hues of fire node gems? And how would he smile in daylight?

Grinning and greedy, Rey turns her head and opens her eyes to see. 

She sees green. A sea of green grass ripples between her fingers. And beyond that, skewed sideways from where she lies, is a wall of white mist. Like the ocean waves Rey mistook it for, waterfalls waft droplets and sound through the air. There are several of them, shaping a halo and carving out a meadow island on which Rey lies. Where she lies is clearly not on Ahch-To, and Ben is nowhere beside her. She is alone. In a place she has never dreamt of before.

Yet. Nostalgia creeps in between her ribs, attempting to make a home in her. Panicked by the feeling, Rey pushes herself up and sets her eyes to searching for something, anything, which would ground her unwarranted feeling of home. But like so many times before, she is on her own in this dream. There is no one to greet her, comfort her, or to simply tell her where she’s been dropped off this time. Like the dreams and visions before, there is abandonment rooted into the landscape. It is an invasive species of feeling, taking any space nostalgia has claimed and laying siege to it. 

Rey’s fingers dig into the grass, down into the damp soil, and she roots herself into the landscape, too. She demands to feel and know something else, anything else besides loneliness. She wants to know where she is. Why she is. And where’s Ben in all this?

The soil against her palms trembles slightly. Steadily pulsing. Decay is feeding new life, but whose decay? Whose life? 

Rey presses her hands deeper into the soil, digging for answers- the soil suddenly dries around her fingers. The rush of water around her comes to a frozen standstill. Withered grass gives way to the ash and stone of Exegol. It pushes back at her hands until they are uprooted, with nothing to hold.

The ground trembles again, with footsteps. A name chokes in her throat. She looks up-

Rey’s eyes land on darkened leather panels. Disoriented, she blinks and blinks again until it becomes clear she’s awake. Her fingers are claws latched onto the sheets, her body rigid in waking from one nightmare only to realize another: she is still alone.

“Ben?” 

Instinctively, Rey says his name, lurching up in bed and scanning the pitch-black room for any sign of his existence. With all the lights off, her sense of space and time are lost. So much so that her heart trips over itself trying to keep up, to remember where and when she is. Is it still night on Tatooine? How long had she slept, and how much of her memory is dream?

“Ben?” Rey calls again, yet she cannot bear to bring her voice to anything above a whisper. There is something terrifying in saying a name aloud, alone, with the fear of that name not having a person tied to it. The louder a name is called, the more deafening the loneliness when no one answers. 

No one does. And, even at a whisper, Ben’s name feels more real than he ever did. 

Terrified of the dark, Rey slips out of bed and stands in the middle of the captain’s quarters. Her motion slowly registers with the overhead lights and they flicker on; dimly at first, then gradually brightening to reveal every shadow. Everything is as it always was before, with none of it hinting to Ben ever being. There are no boots, no utility belt hanging on the stool, and no dents in the pillows or mattress to show he was ever here. Desperately, Rey clings to memory and remembers the grounding pressure of Ben’s head resting on her stomach, of his hand holding hers as she fell asleep. The memory tangles with another. It is entwined with the nightmare of her hand clutching his, incapable of holding on as his fingers faded-

Blood pounds loudly in Rey’s head. The ribs in her chest cave inward, even as her lungs desperately push back for breath. She rushes towards the door-

That’s when she feels it. There is a pull. Iron threads wrap around each of her rib bones, and pull. The blood pounding red and angry and panicking- immediately, every cell hushes. Pressure releases outward, and sighs.

“Ben.”

She sees him, or at least a vision of him, just in front of the door. 

Ben clunkily rises from a seat somewhere she cannot distinguish, and has clearly been real and awake for some time now. He is in fresh clothing; though the only way she can tell is from the distinct lack of Chewie’s shedding on the grey uniform. Wherever Ben is, his back is turned to her- but, only for a second. 

Ben feels it, too: the pull, and the particular rush of intimacy. It fills the connection between them like the froth of a wave, wonderfully light and teasingly temporary. He senses it, tiding him as it does Rey. And he turns, sees her, and sighs in relief.

“Rey.” Her name becomes a smile on his lips. “Did you sleep alright?”

The roots she had wanted in dream come to her now, tugging her feet down to the Millennium Falcon and planting her there. Finally. She smiles back, and nods.

“Yes.”

That rooting, planting feeling intensifies. It tilts oddly to the left. Rey’s smile twitches.

“Ben…” Her eyebrows scrunch in confusion, and mild suspicion. “Where are you?”

“I’m with Chewie.” The tilting shifts to the right and Ben’s smile flattens, his hand bracing down on something to his right. The ‘something’ takes shape for Rey to see. The faded black sweater first catches her eye, tied around a seat. The captain’s seat. “In the cockpit.”

“Why?” Mild suspicion starts to ferment into something more pungent, especially as the ground Rey feels so rooted to begins to pitch and bob. A telling popping in her ears, absolutely separate from their link and _most absolutely_ attached to a new atmosphere, adds to the stew. Rey’s focus narrows. She glares at Ben’s hand, and the captain’s seat it holds onto. “Why are we- why are we landing? Better yet, _where_ are we landing?”

“Kef Bir.” Despite or, more likely, in spite of Rey’s reeling frustration, Ben is calmly centered. Centered and aimed at a goal she was not made privy to. Clearly. The ship teeters from side to side; Ben’s eyes stray off to warily look at something- probably a Wookie- just outside of Rey’s view. 

“Also,” Ben chooses to add on, “technically, we’re not landing.”

Having only just woken up and oriented herself into reality again, Rey’s brain scrambles to catch up with her feet. When it lands, it lands hard: on the darkness she awoke in, on the clear memory of intentionally and _always_ setting the quarter’s dimmers on a timer. She never slept through it, and often woke up just before the lights even turned on. This time, she hadn’t. 

Her eyes are narrowed slits, honed in on Ben’s first question. _Did you sleep alright?_

“When did you-” Rey stammers as the ship sways, and they both stagger to catch themselves. Tousled hair obscures her vision. She immediately swats it away, hastily brushing it back, and feeling the fuzz of a well-rested bedhead. Too well-rested. “Did you deactivate my timer?”

She should have been awake hours ago. 

Ben stands silently for a moment, testing out the tension in their thread before finally answering: “I thought you could use the sleep. By the looks of it, I was right.”

Rey’s eyes blast wide open. 

“I let you sleep in the captain’s quarters _ONCE-”_ she shoots an accusing finger, but the ship dips and her aim swerves off center. She keeps shooting anyway, hitting within the range of Ben’s shoulder and once smacking right in the middle of his ridiculously chuffed grin. “You know, _technically_ , this is my ship and you just hijacked it! We’re supposed to be making our way to Poe’s base on Corellia right now- but _you knew_ that, didn’t you?”

Despite the rocky ride, that hits right on mark. Ben swallows and raises his hand, as if to swat away the accusation. The captain’s chair dissipates, and it’s just him now. He takes a step forward, away from her door- but most likely taking a step towards his. Resisting the odd back-n-forth sway of the ship and Ben’s imposing form, Rey plants herself in his way. He frowns.

“If we’re going to continue being technical: Chewie’s piloting, so it’s not a hijack. Besides, by name, it’s my ship.” Ben lets Rey stand in that for a sway before cocking a slender smile at her. “But, if you wanted, we _could_ have shared custody.”

She’s not completely sure whether she wants to kiss him, or shove him in the garbage chute.

Rolling her eyes, Rey chooses none of the above. Instead, she swerves around him and slams her hand on the door controls. With a hiss, more likely from her than the airlock, the door slides open and the force bond snaps closed. It’s no matter because, within a few steps, she and Ben meet in front of the boarding ramp. 

“Sadly enough,” Rey shakes her head and stares up at Ben in equal measure bemusement and vexation. “That was your best proposal so far.”

Ben’s smile tilts with the ship. “Noted. I’ll do better next time.”

With that, his hand presses down on the ramp’s controls. The second the ramp’s locks unlatch, a terrible crashing sound comes from beyond the metal and, before the ramp is even partially lowered, the Falcon floods with the sound of waves battling against one another. The most violent, enraged sounds, are those of waves reaching up and thrashing at the sides of the Millennium Falcon. As the ramp finally locks into place, Chewie veers out of the way of yet another beating. Rey grips onto a panel as she rocks forward, as an ocean is revealed just below them. The peaks of the Death Star wreckage are a false, ghostly mountain range not too far off in the distance.

The physical wreckage is not the only thing to crest above the water. Unresolved conflict, the wreckage of words and actions rise on the peaks of vicious waves and claw at the ship. They claw at Rey’s side as she follows Ben down the ramp. 

With his back to her again, and the ocean’s turmoil as the scenery, a memory washes ashore: Ben’s hair and clothes soaked through, clinging to him as he tries to cling in turn to a feeling; a chill runs down the length of him until it reaches his hand, until his lightsaber falls from his grasp; and there is Rey, reaching for it, in a blind rage of red that clashes hideously with her surroundings; she seizes it- the rage and the lightsaber- and ignites it-

Rey clutches onto a nearby strut, damn-near choking it, and squeezes her eyes shut. When they open again, Ben is standing in front of her, watching the ocean. But his hair, windswept as it is, is only slightly dampened by mist. There is no lightsaber to fall from his idle hand, or to fall into hers. Still. Rey’s body riles against everything this moon means for her.

“Ben, why are we back here? There’s nothing for us here.”

His eyes are searching the ocean again, as they had just before her strike. They search urgently and in longing for something that cannot be seen. Something lost. The idle hand at his side hangs heavy, and empty. He curls it into a fist.

“There’s something I need to fix.”

Rey senses what he speaks of: the need for connection, the shame of having broken off a piece of himself. She can feel him reaching out for that piece. And she remembers, vividly, how he had burst into the fight on Exegol with only a blaster in hand.

Detaching from the strut and stepping forward, Rey grabs a hold of Ben’s arm instead. 

“The legacy saber is yours-”

“No, it’s not.” A subtle shake of the head is all the expression he gives, but it’s more than she needs to understand. His unrest is an undercurrent pulsing beneath her touch; even if Rey let go of him, she would feel it all the same. 

“My lightsaber is down there.”

“Ben, it’ll be impossible to locate with the current, the time-”

“It’s down there. I’m going to find it.”

Impulsively, and selfishly, Rey thinks for a moment to pull him back inside the ship and talk some sense into him. But the sheer weight of his arm grabs her attention, and grounds it in understanding: there is no sense to be made, not with this and not here. Like the ruins of the Death Star, gravity pulls Ben towards the water. It is what pulled him from sleep before her, what pulled his spirit to this place, and what pulls at his blood now. It’s the unrest she feels, growing more desperate and pained by the second. 

For every scream Rey’s spirit lets out in want of leaving this place behind, Ben’s whispers in echo. Yet, somehow, his echoes are louder and clearer than her screams. He wants to leave. He has wanted to for years. He just can’t. Not when a part of him is still stranded here.

Rey sighs, releasing Ben’s arm. “Alright.”

“And I need you to pilot the ship.”

The urge to grab his arm again, if only to pinch it, is strong. He must sense it, because he finally detaches his gaze from the ocean and spots the flare in her eyes just before it dies down. Her eyebrows are raised as war flags.

“Your ship or mine?”

The warning shot is met with subtle grace. Despite the bitter air, Ben’s smile warms her cheeks.

“Ours.” 

And that, well that warms every other part of her.

“Fine,” Rey mumbles in respite, scrambling to salvage her grudge. “But the second water gets into the engines, I’m taking off.”

Ben’s smile endears to her stubbornness. It elevates slightly from its usual low altitude, lopsided and creasing his left cheek with cryptic ravines. “I know.”

If only she could blame the cooling ocean mist for dissolving her resentment, but the elements always played second fiddle to the simplest display of Ben’s affection. If anything, the elements managed to compliment his displays, as they do now with the gentle dampening of dark curls around his face. And her mind wanders dangerously to that dream she had, to the waterfalls and what she thought was his hair between her fingers… and then she remembers being alone, and waking alone.

The resentment condenses back into her blood. Before Ben’s smile can do anymore damage to her stubborn will, she turns to march inside-

“Rey, wait-”

His fingers brush against her palm; she immediately turns back around. Ben’s already bent down to meet her and, in one swift motion, his lips dive onto hers. The kiss is a morning tide, floating in between her lips and filling her up until she is adrift in it, only to feel Ben’s lips ebb. Pulled by the tide, she leans in as he moves away, tilting her head up to chase his lips. She may loathe the ocean beneath them, but she loves the one that flows between them now.

Clearly Ben does too, because he’s just as reluctant to part it. He does though, gently receding until his forehead is pressed to Rey’s. His brow ripples over hers, and she can feel the crease of regret forming. He sighs.

“I’ve been waiting to do that.”

Ben’s confession forms a matching regretful crease in Rey’s brow, which she rubs mercilessly into his as she shakes her head. When she pulls away to look at him in all his headstrong and wide-eyed glory, there is not a single drop of resentment left in her. Though there is plenty of exasperation and contentment, all tangled up in a rueful smile. 

“You shouldn’t have waited. _This_ is what I want to wake up to. _Not_ Kef Bir.”

The regret collapses over Ben’s eyes, and they shut for a moment- no doubt imagining how delightfully different their morning could have been. Rey peeks at the possibility, too: at how Ben would have woken up first and turned his head carefully upon her chest, adjusting himself to look at her better- all while meticulously trying not to budge the mattress. She suspects he would wait a while, until there was a flicker of lashes or a signaling sigh, before he finally allowed himself to kiss her. At least, at first. Oh, she hopes there are days when his lips are too impatient and eager, and rush to say good morning to hers. She definitely knows she can be that impatient, that eager, so much so there will certainly be days she wakes up first and does the kissing for him. And there _must_ be exhausted mornings on which she grumpily rolls away from him, only to feel the stroke of his nose and lips at her neck, or back, or any part of her he can and _will_ reach for. Now that Rey knows she can and should have it, she wants every version of it. She knows that now. And now, so does Ben.

He grins in gentle agreement. “Noted.”

“Good. Do better next time.”

With that, their learning curve adjusts and so do the waves below them. The tidal pulls are lessening, and the ship is not lurching as much as before. Rey takes the hint and heads into the cockpit, where she discovers Chewie fussing with the controls. She hooks an arm around the chair, resting it cozily on Ben’s sweater, and swoops into Chewie’s periphery.

“I can take it from here,” she beams, eager to reclaim her spot and figuring Chewie would be equally relieved. Instead, his nose shrivels in on itself, mouth grimacing and making an affronted sound.

“Hey! My breath does not stink, I- Oh, _oh no_ -” Rey shoots upright, matching Chewie’s expression affront for affront. She cups her mouth, and attempts to hold back the mortifying realization that, while Ben had not forgotten to fulfill his morning routine of waking, grooming, and kissing this morning… she had most definitely forgotten a few things. Like a toothbrush.

When Chewie stands up from the seat, her hand shoots out. Her reach is urgent, and her expression is completely mortified.

“Give me your flask.”

Chewie cocks his head to the side, but Rey’s hand juts out further in determination. “I know you have it. Give it.”

She can sense Ben knocking, and her eyes bulge. “Chewie!”

Begrudgingly, and grumbling, Chewie reaches into his satchel and tosses Rey a copper flask before shifting into the co-pilot’s seat. After taking a quick swig and swish of alcohol, Rey fills the vacated captain’s chair and hastily pulls her hair back into a half bun. Just in time.

“Are you ready?”

Ben’s voice quietly comes to her, an odd tickle at her neck and ears. It feels like a whisper through the crack of a door; it’s a door she hasn’t often opened, and never for long. The idea of it being open again is both a rush of nerves and excitement- both of which lack focus and readiness.

Rey takes a steadying breath. When she sighs out, she nudges the Force’s door open just a little wider. Wide enough to hear Ben’s own exhale, and the waves around him. They sound, and must look, different to the waves she sees through the cockpit’s window. Curious, Rey looks back, but there’s nothing but the access tunnel to see. She adjusts in the seat, grabs onto the control yoke, and keeps her ear on the door. 

“Ready.”

“I don’t sense it here,” Ben’s voice is clearer now, and focused. A flicker of his thoughts slip through the doorway: an image of the Death Star wreckage. Her stomach clenches. “We need to get closer.”

“Alright.” Rey’s hands are stiff on the yoke as she gradually turns the ship around, and unwillingly brings the wreckage into central view. With a nudge of her fists, they tread towards the Death Star. 

“Lower.”

She feels Ben’s reach, struggling to make contact, and guides the Falcon a little lower to the ocean. The waves hiss at her ear. For a while, they’re all she hears as Ben searches down unknown depths. Then, unknowingly, the sounds shift from those of waves to feeling. 

Ben’s mind doesn’t sound so different from the restless current stirring underfoot, except Rey understands the meaning behind his movements. When his desperation leans heavily to the left, she steers the ship in that direction. His frustration pushes forward; she engages the throttle.

Having searched the waters at the port side of the wreckage, they begin to round to the starboard. On this side, what little sunlight attempts to break through the clouds is permanently blocked by the Death Star’s dominant shadow. The waves are darker and louder here, and their meaning spills in through the crack in the door. Where Ben’s voice had tickled her neck, they send unwelcomed chills. Her hands grip tighter on the control. 

Rey determines to maintain the course, focusing beyond the noise to Ben’s needs. But she feels the pull of various forces. They tug at her, him, and most violently at the water. The ocean begins to lash out the longer they stay. It slaps against the window. Rey winces.

“Ben, the waves are getting too high.”

Her wrists twitch to defend the weary Millennium Falcon against another attack-

“Wait.” Ben’s plea is a thin thread, wrapped around her wrists, begging her to hold steady. It doesn’t feel like he’s doing so well himself. She closes her eyes, and peeks through the door, and sees him. He has one hand gripped tight against a strut, knuckles pale and jagged, and his other hand is outstretched and vulnerable to the ocean’s teeth. His eyes are squeezed shut, and the lines on his face reflect the water’s turmoil. He grapples with it, and searches through it, for what he needs. 

But there is too much here, and too much depth. Rey feels the immensity and the futility of this place, and just how exhausted Ben is from being lost in it.

“... Ben.”

“Wait…” 

This time, it is less of a plea. The thread is a rope now, and he hastily casts it out into the ocean. “I feel it.”

Rey immediately stills the ship, hovering in place. And it’s as if the moon does not want them to stay. The waves’ collective heartbeat pounds louder than before, with the wind offering nothing but cruel lashings, and it takes both Rey and Chewie manning the controls to keep their home from getting battered. There is no telling how Ben fares on the boarding ramp, at least not for Chewie, who is too focused on wailing about impending repairs. Rey focuses on the mental, and closes her eyes again to peer through the door. 

The connection seems to have been whipped shut. She opens it a crack, and there is a warning cry of feeling from the other side. It is not a singular feeling from Ben, but an entire history of this place. Like the waves, the sound of it is layered and deafening. And she knows Ben is feeling it too, and struggling to swim through it. In, amongst every other overwhelming sensation, there is a subdued, miniscule pulse of Ben in the Force. He is suffocating. Sinking. 

So, she swings the door open. The force of an ocean floods in.

The first feeling on impact is cold fear. Rey’s skin chills and her lungs burn outrage. She tries to remember what little training she’s had, and attempts to breathe and calm her mind. However, in the dark spots of her vision, she sees a reflection of her worst self. She is her grandfather’s legacy, sunken and trapped beneath the Death Star. Writhing to surface. Angry and starving. She is terrified by the possibility of letting that part of her breathe. She suffocates. She sinks. 

Rey descends through the fear, down into the next expanse, and is confronted with reason for her fear: remorse. The energies whirl together, tinting the Force in blue and red- the blue of water and the red of Kylo Ren’s lightsaber wielded and struck by her hand into Ben’s flesh. She sinks still deeper, and the Force goes dark with death. It is every death inherited by this place: from the Death Star, the Empire, the Republic; from Rey, and from Ben.

There is one death in particular that ripples through the Force gently, like a wisp in the current. Leia. 

As it had in the moment her son was struck, the feeling of Leia breathes through Rey. And it is enough to save her from suffocating. Rey takes that breath, calms, and dives deeper to face her fear, her anger and remorse and the death of who she wanted to be. The feelings pull at her, threaten to tear her to bits, but Rey does not flee from the tide. She eases into it, embracing and forgiving it as best she can. Rey flows through it until she is landed on the needed seabed. Of course, there is nothing here for her in the Force besides rest. But Ben. She takes steps to find him until, beneath her feet, is the edge of a trench. She feels Ben there, his soul filling a depth in the Force that runs parallel to hers. Though she has dipped her mind in once before, this promises to be different. The current nudges her entirety towards an unknown and untouched expanse. 

She dives in.

Death still darkens Ben’s mind. It is thick as mud, clinging to her skin as she tries to move through it. And there are sharp bits- Leia’s death is a shard, digging deeper as the memory of Rey’s own face in that moment passes by. Her expression is a cruel snarl. However, it doesn’t take long for the wet clay to morph. She is pained, disappointed, her lips framing a eulogy, _I did want to take your hand_ ; Ben is all longing and abject feeling. Under threat of losing focus, of staying in this moment in desperate want of changing it, Rey forces herself to sink deeper, past her leaving, past glimpses of Han, until she gets to the ocean floor. 

It is barren, at first. Until she feels a tremor, a heartbeat underneath. Ben’s loss. Rey lowers to the ground and presses her hand to it. She feels Ben’s pain as her own, and sees it: his lightsaber. It lies in shadow, rusted and hilt sunk in sand, at the bottom of the trench. He reaches for it and so does she, as though it were hers. As though their needs were one. 

Guided by feeling, Rey breathes in and centers herself in Ben as he does in her. Immersed, they exhale. As one. They call out.

The tremor goes still. The calamity in the Force around them silences. There is a break in the waves, and then they cry. But it is background noise now. Ben’s hand clutches around his lightsaber. It is returned, and his.

“Yes!” In a sweep of relief, Rey surfaces from Ben and immediately lifts the Millennium Falcon out of the waves’ vindictive reach. She switches over control to Chewie’s station and swivels around in her chair. 

“We got it!” she exclaims cheerfully to Ben through their link, “we actually-”

Her buzz cuts off when Ben does not turn to look at her. His profile is stiff, head bent down and eyes locked on the lightsaber in his hand. His grip is lax, and his gaze lost. He has not surfaced yet.

“... Ben?”

Rey steps forward, and looks to his lightsaber. She sees the mud on it, deeply set in the mechanisms. The shards of his parents’ deaths dig into his palm. She remembers the glimpse of Han’s face, the faint touch of a father’s love on his cheek. 

Ben’s cheeks are pale, and there is a barely disguised shiver to his lips. Carefully, Rey’s hand blankets his. The boarding ramp, and the ocean, spill out around him until she is there with him- if only in their minds. 

“You’re getting soaked, Ben, and so are the engines. We should go…”

Though his fingers curl around her hand, the rest of him does not move. Cannot move. She reaches with her other hand, and places it on his cheek. He is definitely cold, but the touch of her warms Ben just enough for him to lean into it. He finally looks at her.

“Come inside, Ben.”

He does. And he brings the ocean with him, dripping onto the cockpit’s floor and dampening the NAV seat he drops onto. Rey is returned to the pilot’s station, facing him and watching as he silently places the lightsaber they saved on the seat across from him. It’s a safe distance away, until they can figure out what to do about it.

Rey has a clue, but it’s lodged in her throat and there are coordinates only half-entered into the navigation system. Chewie watches the two of them as he eases the ship to a higher altitude, warily waiting to get offplanet and input the final half of the coordinates.

Ben stares at the drops of water on the floor until they pool together. Eventually, he gathers himself together too and looks up to face Rey. His gaze is braced, but open.

So, she goes for it.

“There’s one more stop I think we should make.”

“I know.” Ben’s resolve trembles for a moment, but then he swallows and says: “punch it, Chewie.”

* * *

They’re in the last hyperspace jump when Rey finally works the comm unit, after Chewie refuses to. Despite being part of the reason they’ll be late to Corellia, he’s too much of a coward to message Poe about it. Rey’s not exactly too enthused by the idea either, and discretely routes the code to Finn’s unit instead. 

“How long do you think Poe will hold this over us?” she asks Chewie, already knowing the answer her co-pilot mutters back. Rey rolls her eyes. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

The seat behind her creaks and pivots slightly in her direction. For the third time in over four hours, she feels Ben’s eyes on her. It’s the first time, in those exact four hours, that he speaks. “How long did I set us back?”

Despite having already sent the message with the estimated time of arrival, Rey checks the chrono on the control panel. 

“Oh, just by eleven hours and twenty-three minutes.”

As expected, Ben immediately returns to his penitent, solemn oath of silence. And, also as expected, Rey’s childishness backfires on her spectacularly. Wasn’t she the one who chose the current four-hour detour? Chewie’s eyeballs are sending the exact same question her way, and she winces at her own lapse into selfishness. 

She just wanted Ben to talk to her. 

So, Rey finally takes matters into her own hands and turns her seat around. She witnesses Ben doing what took him three hours to finally do: fix his lightsaber. Hunched over and sleeves rolled up, he reaches into a toolkit tucked between his feet and works on replacing rusted or damaged pieces. Occasionally, he grabs the rag off his thigh to dig out another cluster of mud in the framework. Currently, Ben focuses on a maddening inside corner of the crossguard. He’s calm, but unwaveringly obstinate and brooding, and Rey isn’t going to get any better opportunity for conversation.

“I’m sorry.”

Ben’s work immediately halts. “What?”

There must be mud in his cogs, too, because it takes him a while to turn his head and look at her. He’s bewildered, probably suspecting there to be mud in his ears too.

Rey rubs her hands up and down her thighs before finally, nervously buckling down. “I said I’m sorry. For what happened on Kef Bir-”

“Rey-”

“I don’t mean today. I mean…” She licks her lips and presses them together, just as Ben’s drop open in understanding. He’s still a bit bewildered, though, and his silent expression only twists at her anxiety. “I nearly killed you- _I hurt you_ . Remembering how I let anger and pain take hold of me that way, to lash out at you… _again_ ... it’s part of the reason why I hated waking up on Kef Bir of all places.”

Though the bewilderment is gone, Ben shakes his head. “Rey, I pushed you to it. From the second we met, I was always pushing and trying to prove I was right even if it meant all the wrong things for you.” He flicks the rag out of the crossguard, and then switches over to the other side of it. “I deserved what I got.”

Her entire face scowls. “No, you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did.” 

Ben doesn’t even bother looking at her when he argues, instead nodding down at his lightsaber like it’s said something on the matter. Rey may not want to stab him anymore, but she sure does get the itch to yank that lightsaber right out of his hands. She settles for rolling her eyes and huffing.

“You are so stubborn.”

“So are you.”

Rey glares at him despite there being no point to the aggression. Ben is returned to his busywork, distracting himself from the bigger task at hand. For a few seconds, she allows it- if only to calm herself down for that exact task. She’s better at that now: recognizing her more fiery emotions and facing them, understanding them. 

“You were right, though. I was too afraid of myself to admit it, but you were right about-”

“No, I wasn’t.” Whether it’s on purpose or not, the stubbornness is thickly laid on, and even Ben winces at it. He looks up and the stone of Rey’s face reassures him she won’t let the aggression slide. So, Ben adjusts his tone and tries again. “Neither of us were right. Yes, you could have killed me, but you healed me instead. There’s nothing to feel sorry for, Rey... What you did in the dark, you mended in the light. I would never hold it against you.”

“But you hold it against yourself.”

Ben quiets and, with no argument left in him, he channels his energy into his hands. Yet, even the mending he does in the physical world is half-hearted.

“Was it always yours?” Rey asks quietly, eying the one part of Ben’s lightsaber he has yet to tend to: the crystal chamber. “Even before…”

“Before Snoke?” His wrist twists hard, grinding the rag into the crossguard. He takes a breath and sits up, tugging the rag out and shaking off the seabed sludge. He stares down at the metal, rag bunched in his hand. There are still stains, only they are not so easy to clean. 

Ben’s thumb drags across the crossguard to the heart of his lightsaber. “I made it from scratch when I was Luke’s padawan.” His nail scraps against the surface. “When I left the Jedi, I remade it.”

“You bled it.”

His silence echoes the painful act. 

Rey’s insides twist. Yet, the pressure and anguish she feels in attempting to understand is crudely insufficient. Frankly, she wishes never to know what it means to bleed like that. She wishes even more Ben did not have such intimate knowledge. The small knowledge she does have on the matter, the little pebble of a clue she’s kept lodged in her throat, finally rattles upwards and onto her tongue. It rolls around on there, before Rey eventually tosses it out.

“Somewhere in the texts, I read-”

“- kybers can be healed.” Ben recites the facts and nods warily; Rey suspected this reaction and deflates. Ben sighs and puts the rag and tools to rest on the floor. He’s left only with his lightsaber, which he appraises guardedly. “It’s what I meant to do, why I convinced Chewie to fly us to Kef Bir, but now…”

Chewie softly chimes in, attempting to lift his nephew’s burden enough to let him move forward. Ben gives a wistful, small smile.

“I know, Chewie. I do, it’s just-”

The Millennium Falcon interrupts Ben, a signal beeping off the display monitor. It announces the reentry to realspace. Being the final jump, it means arrival at their destination. Ben lurches out of the seat, haphazardly stepping over the tools to stand. Whatever he would have said, however he meant to open up, is torn out of him when they exit the hyperspace tunnel. 

The blue spectacle of hyperspace collapses, and immediately explodes into the light of a red giant. The star burns a safe distance from the Millennium Falcon. Despite that, there is already severe damage dealt. Emotions sear through the Force, from Rey, Chewie… Ben. He’s still standing, but the intensity of him is sapped by the star. By what it used to be.

The display monitor shows the coordinates for a planet that does not exist anymore: Ilum. Starkiller base. It goes by a different name now.

“People call it The Solo,” Rey speaks into the void. The name is a wound opened, and a universe of feeling rushes out of it, radiating from the star to touch Ben. The force of it knocks the breath out of him. His knees buckle, and he is pushed back into the seat he just rose from. For a beat, Ben stays frozen this way, staring straight into the sun. The brutal, direct sight of it is a thin excuse for his eyes to sting and well with tears; it’s the same excuse used by Rey and Chewie. But the light is not to blame, and they all know it. It takes time, but after an awful spell of staring, seeing, and barely breathing, Ben admits to it first. He drops his lightsaber and hunches in on himself, burying his face in his hands. 

Rey has never heard Ben weep before. She’s never seen him fall apart. 

Like witnessing an explosion, at first Rey is too terrified to move. She just watches, as Ben’s shoulders shudder and struggle to move the oppressive weight of pain off his body. He pushes it out in cries that are immediately muffled by his palms. He is ashamed, and desperate to pull the pain right back in. Every muscle spasms from the conflicted push and pull. With Ben’s sleeves rolled up, Rey can see how his arms clench and shake violently. 

She recalls his seabed in the Force, how it trembled, and her fear is confirmed: it’s not just the loss of his lightsaber buried down there. It’s not even the loss of his father, or the loss of himself in that moment on the bridge. If there is anything Rey can compare it to, it’s the feeling she would get some nights on Jakku when she looked up to find a star… only to face darkness in its place. To realize the star she had loved had always been dead, even as she admired its light in the sky, was a tragedy she never knew how to explain. In those moments, she felt robbed of mourning. All the while, she was unreasonably ashamed for not acknowledging its death for so long, knowing it was too late to say goodbye. And in the end, Rey could only mourn the loss of time. It’s how she feels about her parents. And now, she knows it’s how Ben feels about his.

Rey stands up and approaches his curled up form. At the touch of her hand in his hair, his arms reach up and grab what they can of her. They wrap around Rey and pull her close enough for his head to drag upwards and press against her stomach, hiding his face there. And it almost feels like they’re curled up in bed again, honest and safe with one another. Except his hands cling to the clothing on her back- and it echoes her own hands that morning, clutched down on sheets when she woke to the nightmare of being lost and alone again.

She cradles his head, and uses her voice to shelter him.

“None of the maps have this star officially named yet, but The Solo is what rebels always ended up with in their war stories about this place. It caught on, and every once in a while Chewie and I hear it as we pass through different sectors. Always a little different, and almost always it starts up other stories- legends really, about Han and Leia, Luke. These stories don’t ever come close to being everything your family was, and even Chewie’s been caught fabricating- but they’re nice to hear, all the same. It’s like hearing their voices again. It’s comforting.”

Ben’s body is calmer now, with his arms wrapped snug around her waist; they don’t want to let her go, but they’re not so afraid anymore. Rey strokes his hair, and watches how the sunlight changes it. She smiles at the ruby hues… and the unexpected, delightful golden strands, too. 

“I only ever wished I could hear your voice, too.” With half of her mind in a memory of sitting with her friends and longing to tell things she herself didn’t know, her admission comes from a distance. It is quiet, and homesick. “What stories would Ben Solo have? About your family- you. Oh, _kriff_ , the stories Chewie has told me about you!”

That gets a reaction, and Ben’s groan vibrates through her. “Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes. Your first attempts to speak Shyriiwook?” Rey laughs, and her eyelashes wetly brush against her skin. It feels refreshing, and she lets the moment be for a second before wiping at her eyes and turning to exchange a joyful look with Chewie. He’s been just as silent and mournful as his nephew, but the mention makes him chuckle. Rey beams. “A favorite of ours.”

When her focus returns to Ben, he has finally moved. Not much, but enough to reveal himself. Ben’s emotions are a warzone drawn out and waged on his face. Rey tenderly places a hand on his cheek, her thumb tracing the masked, damp scar that runs from his eye down to his jaw. Physically healed by Rey on Kef Bir, it is a phantom pain now. This part of the wound, she can’t mend. 

“We didn’t just come here to grieve, Ben, or to say goodbye-”

The war takes a turn for the worse, dragging deep lines across his face. “Rey-”

“ _I know_ , Ben.” She grips him, fingers clutched at either side of his jaw. She presses the force of her into him- as she had on Kef Bir, as she had first unwittingly done on Starkiller base. The immersion is brief, but it does well to remind them both of just how much she knows and understands. 

“The story of this place is different for you, and I know it’s a different pain than ours- but I also know it’s not all there is to you, or to your father. The story doesn’t end with his death or yours. It doesn’t end at all- it’s reborn. Just look out there at that beautiful star! It used to be a dead planet, a weapon, but it gave life to light- light that is present and alive right in front of us! That star out there... thousands of years from now, far-off planets will see it in their skies long after it's gone, and it has your father’s name on it. Your name, too. For some, that may be all it ever is: a star with a name and a war story. But it’s Han, and it’s you, and it has always been about love and forgiveness. Your father loved you. He forgave you a long time ago. We did, too. Don’t you think it’s finally time you do the same?”

Naturally, Ben doesn’t answer right away. But the intensity in his eyes is returning, and promising, and so is his grip around her. When he gives his answer, it’s not with words. It’s an unsteady exhale, the kind that is terrified of what’s being let out of his lungs. When it ends, he embraces her again. But this time he lands upon her chest, giving her somewhere to rest as well. She dips her chin and presses a kiss to his hair, letting her arms drape over his shoulders. The touch of her fingers on his back relieves him further, and he sinks into her- and though her shirt feels damp, it is different from the waves of Kef Bir or the tears of remorse and mourning. It is kinder.

There is a creaking from behind and before Rey can glance up, long hairs tickle her back and her arms. Chewie is there, awkwardly bending down to hug both her and Ben. He squeezes them together just a little too tightly- but no one complains. Especially not her. It feels too good and fulfilling- like the family every dream has forsaken her. With the light of Han’s sun embracing them, it is warm. Peaceful. _Real._ And she is not afraid. She is not alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I know I said this would be five chapters long, but what I meant was: seven. In the spirit of this chapter, I hope you can forgive me~.


	5. For Intimacy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With time to kill before the Falcon reaches Corellia, Rey allows herself to relax and wash off her mind with a shower. Naturally, things don't go exactly to plan and the shower manages to fill Rey's head with some quite troubling, and tantalizing, thoughts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ATTN: Rating has gone up to Mature for the time-being. Don't know if it'll "upgrade" from there, but definitely staying at M to cover the base of this chapter and to cover future chapters. Thanks again for all the lovely reviews, and enjoy!

Rey is alone now. 

Or, at least, she’s as alone as she can be on the Falcon in one of very few places the feat is even possible: the refresher. And oh, does she need refreshing. 

Their route through the Hydian Way is at its tail end, with Corellia and all its implications impatiently waiting just outside of hyperspace. For hours, Rey comfortably sat in a stew of impending doom, like a paddy frog unaware of the water starting to boil around it. Only in the final hour did the boil pop, as Rey excused herself from Chewie’s poignant thoughts about her physical state... and from Ben’s relentless mental self-warfare. After attempting to eat, and failing, she ends up here.

Solitude, for once, comes as a relief.

With days-old clothes finally peeled off her skin, Rey steps into the steel shower. It’s not much of a defined space, really, with one rounded showerhead fixed to the ceiling and a singular calcified glass panel separating it from the toilet and sink. But it’s enough. One twist of a nozzle, and the boiling in her head transforms into pleasant steam. The water is pressurized to just the right measure, persistent and loud enough to create the perfect white-noise. The Force is pushed back beyond the shower’s small perimeter. Rey is alone.

She sighs into the moment and closes her eyes, tilting her head back into the water. It engulfs her, momentarily blocking her ears and creating an eerie echo chamber of her movements and breath. This level of self-awareness isn’t something Rey thinks she’ll ever get used to. She adjusts, wiping at her ears and leaning forward slightly to find the right balance of peace and quiet, and pressure. And, after briefly letting herself relish in the kneading jet stream at her scalp, Rey focuses on the rudimentary task of washing her hair. Her nails scratch against scalp in an attempt to weed out any lasting residue of Tatooine. Sand reluctantly rinses out. As a veteran to the task, Rey’s palms instinctively and fervently rub at every inch of skin in order to prevent the sand from settling back into her. 

Rey can do without another desert planet for the rest of her life and then some. 

It is precisely because of desert planets, bathing is more chore than leisure. Even after taking up residence on the Millennium Falcon and discovering its water-based shower, not much has changed in Rey’s mindset or regimen. She only washes once or twice a week, unless a scavenge run ends in more muck than usual. And always, when the water gets flowing, her mind immediately taps into old survival tactics: scrubbing creases for hidden, annoying deposits of grit, using as little water and time as possible to complete the task- despite there being almost no grit to scrub, or a basin to worry about knocking over, or sandstorms to whip through and render the whole task futile. 

Rey had never thought much of it until Rose took notice after one particularly quick wash. 

_"You’re missing out on the best part!"_ Rose had looked absolutely beside herself, offended really. _"You have to soak in it, fill the room with steam, have shower thoughts! There’s no such thing as daydreaming in a sonic."_

So, Rey had attempted to soak the very next day; the room filled with steam, her mind wandered.. _._ for five minutes. Water was shut off, steam evaporated, and the mind was put right back into place. Turned out her survival tactics from Jakku were not just about scrubbing things out. It was about keeping things in- the kind of things that a lifetime of scrubbing could not possibly clean. It agitated. And _soaking_ in hot water only made matters worse; as her blood heated, memories and thoughts floated to the surface- visible, angry, and impossible to get rid of.

Rey had decided she was perfectly alright with ‘missing out’ on shower thoughts. But now… 

In the midst of the usual brisk routine, Rey’s movements slow. She does not usher the soap off her body. Instead, she watches the suds bubble and float over freckles and pores. She smiles at the tickle of it. She soaks. Her skin flushes with the heat, blood rising- but the steam fills the room with humidity and the water feels like rain. 

Washed clean of deserts, Rey listens for waterfalls. 

Her dream from last night comes back to her in the day, the sediment of a green landscape eagerly falling into place in her skin. And she can hear the waterfalls, the sound of them amplified by proximity. Fresh scents trickle into the daydream. Clear, palpable feeling pours in. 

She might be a little too good at this.

On the back of Rey’s eyelids, her selected daydream is made real: the meadow she had laid upon in sleep is hazily drawn out in front of her, just beyond the mist. The shower’s heat flickers in and out until it is snuffed by a brisk flood. 

Refreshed, awakened, Rey grins and shudders into the vision. Without needing to look, she knows herself waist-deep in a bracing lake. Her toes curl around smooth rocks and slippery vegetation. Behind her, the teasing splash of water and the roar of its constant fall almost complete the scene. Almost. Then, just as in last night’s dream, she feels a longing for home- for something, someone just beyond reach. 

The breeze sighs, kisses her shoulder blade. She knows this intimacy.

“Ben?”

Jolted, Rey opens her eyes and turns around. She is, naturally, still in the shower. Yet, the vision and the longing cling to her; the kiss is still damp on her shoulder, and she can sense the full lips and handsome face undoubtedly attached to it. But, of course, Ben is nowhere in sight. He can’t be, since she left him with Chewie in the cockpit. Even the bond is muted, purposefully giving her the privacy inexplicitly needed… even more so than she expected.

She’s still alone. So why do her ears burn in embarrassment? 

Why should they?

There is a silent standoff, in which Rey stares past the water and steam at the steel walls of the shower. The vague shape of her is reflected back- blurred on the surface, but silhouette bold and unapologetic. 

Rey is alone, with her thoughts, and for once: they are thoughts she enjoys. So. She lets herself linger in the shower, in thoughts, and the enjoyment of it.

Closing her eyes again, Rey relishes the warmth, pressure and richness of touch as water shapes itself to her body. As it shapes itself into Ben’s hands, pouring over her bare shoulders and caressing down her arms. Droplets on her right cheek form soft lips, dripping down to kiss her jaw. And the steam curling at her ear is his breath.

The water shapes itself to fill in and press down on pressure points of Rey’s memory. But there are not that many memories of Ben’s touch to fill. So, Rey happily lets it overflow. The water flows past memory, dreamily trailing down her neck, her chest and back… and imagining Ben’s fingers and lips is far too easy. Far too pleasant.

The longing from before is a pulse now. Haptic, heavy and heated. It wraps around her waist, digging in like fingers at her hips. It tugs at her, pulling her in- 

With a gasp, Rey’s eyes open and she is returned to the lake. The fingers at her waist are broad, firm, _real_. They’re Ben’s. He stands behind her, and it’s not steam or a waterfall she feels against her back- it’s his skin. Slick with water, his chest is a warm expanse covering her, pressing into her-

It’s definitely not a breeze that kisses her shoulder this time. Breezes don’t have tongues.

“ _Rey_.”

Ben’s hand drips down. Beneath the water, between-

Rey turns and nearly breaks the shower nozzle. 

She stands for a beat, red-faced and head flooded by the briefest glimpse of Ben’s body before the vision’s end. Despite the air already chilling around her, the steam is hot as a furnace at her belly. Her eyes bulge and her body tightens, and it’s all she can do to step out of the shower.

“That’s new.”

That’s a lie. Somewhat. Rey stifles the denial by wrapping herself up tightly in a towel and having the cool tiles shoot reason into her from the soles up. 

It’s not that she has never thought of Ben… that way. Clearly, in the past twenty-odd hours, she did her fair part in thinking and acting on those thoughts as far as Ben would let her. But she only needs a few pruney fingers to count the amount of times she had drifted into _intimate_ thoughts. She never let herself think too long or too hopeful about any of it. And never once had she experienced a _vision_ of intimacy.

It’s one matter to want and to imagine being with Ben, to feel free and happy enough to do so, and another entirely to envision it so tangibly. Clear, solid, and promised. Fated to happen.

The longing, coiled and ready, inside her just wonders… _when?_

Rey’s frustration on the matter is nothing new, and unfortunately becomes double-fold when she realizes, too late, her change of clothes are not hung over the sink. With a resigned sigh, she re-secures the towel around her, and makes the small cross over from the refresher to the captain’s- _her_ quarters. 

With a few key presses, the door leaps open. Rey nearly leaps through the ceiling. 

“Ben!”

The man of her daydream is lying in her bed. Or, was. 

At the terrifying sound of his name, and equally terrifying sight of Rey in a towel, Ben lurches wide-eyed from the bunk. His head hits the overhead paneling with a punishing _thunk._ He immediately doubles over and clutches his forehead.

For all their Force sensitivity, they really didn’t see this coming.

“I… I usually get dressed in the refresher, but, well...” Rey excuses herself into her own room, like an idiot. The door exhaustingly shuts behind her, in an attempt to contain the stupidity. It also manages to seal in a particular heat that has not completely lifted from Rey after the shower. 

Thankfully, the initial shock of her entrance continues to throb in Ben’s skull and he seems rather oblivious to any sort of throbbing happening inside of her. Rey’s thoughts are safe, for the time being, despite being obnoxiously loud. Unfortunately, her feelings are projecting in other, much more transparent ways. 

Ben’s eyes flicker up to Rey’s collarbone. The exposed lines halt him from looking any further and Rey feels a lick of uproar in him, like a drop of fuel, just before he seals his mind. After a breath, free of any fumes, Ben deems it safe to meet her eyes- but his gaze is burnt coal. The airlock on the door might finally serve a purpose because Rey feels ignited, fire in her throat. She tries to swallow it down. And down it goes, spreading elsewhere. 

Everything feels bright and red. The pathetic white towel is not helping to conceal much of anything.

“I forgot my clothes.”

“I can see that.” Ben’s sarcasm is drier than usual, pained and cracking as if from drought. He flinches and rubs his head. 

“I thought you’d be in the cockpit.”

“I was. Now I’m not.” He sighs, averting his eyes and reproaching himself. 

Idiocy, apparently, spreads like wildfire. 

Ben, at least, attempts to do something about the hazardous situation. He pushes his arms against his legs, readying to leave. “I’ll go back-”

“NO- it’s fine!” Rey’s exclamation is frantic, frustrated, and Ben is blown back onto the bed by it. Rey’s face, already unbearably scolding, discovers new temperatures of embarrassment. 

Having Ben in the room should be fine. More than fine. She wants it to be. “Stay. You can stay.”

Ben looks like he’s been thrown into another pit. “Rey, that’s not-”

“I’m not saying I want you to watch!” Her teeth snap together. If she could bite off her own face, she would. “What I’m saying is- you- I have seen you nake-'' Rey’s brain flares, and she dumps a mental bucket of ice over her shower thoughts. “ _Half_ -naked twice now.”

“Yes. You have.” Ben’s expression tentatively lifts, at the left corner of his lips. A chuckle bobs in his throat, waiting for Rey’s hook. Unfortunately, she’s struggling to make it, let alone cast it.

“We have kissed. A lot.” Rey’s nodding her head at Ben like he’s about to deny it. From the look of his amused grin, and just logic in general, it’s clear he is not about to. “And we’ve slept in the same bed. It doesn’t make sense for either of us to leave.”

Though the amused smile is still fixed in place, she can see the light of laughter dying in his eyes. “You’re right. This doesn’t make sense.”

Rey has felt death before. What she feels now is ten times worse. She grimaces with her entire face. After a breath, she restructures and communicates in the most basic code. “You were resting. Keep doing that. I am going over there,” she points for further clarity, to the galley, “where I clearly hung my clothes, and I will get dressed. Nobody leaves. That’s that.”

Ben’s eyes have followed Rey’s direction, but his posture is not confident about any of this. He’s hunched, elbows sunk on his thighs and his hands pressed together as if in prayer. Just over the tips of his fingers, his mouth reluctantly appears.

“Just to be clear,” he says slowly, his words hanging along with his eyes on the apparel Rey fully intends to change into. “You _don’t_ want me to look.”

Ben turns his gaze to her then. His braced expression, and Rey’s grip on her towel, are equally matched. 

“... do _you_ _want_ to look?”

The man of her dreams collapses back onto her bed. A strangled groan is all the answer she gets from him. 

Frustration, of various kinds, fuel Rey’s steps to the galley. Stubbornness plants her there, despite the ridiculous blush she has had no success whatsoever in extinguishing. Determination, and a little pinch of spite, gets her moving.

Rey pulls her hair back into a damp bun, and drops her towel. The sound of it landing on the floor is obscenely loud and singular. Each minute movement echoes much the same, from the slip of her nude underwear off the counter, the calculated in and exhale of breath coming from the bed behind her, to the sound of her own tongue in her mouth. Hyperaware, she goes about doing the most routine of things, feeling every texture and movement as brand new. 

All which is muted in solitude shouts now. Rey distracts herself by listening for other things. 

Last she heard, Ben’s mind was up to all kinds of noise. So she points her focus there. Except. 

Ben’s thoughts are emphatically silent. He is also trying to listen: to the give of her knee-length trousers as she pulls them up, to the hug of rough material at her waist and the casual touch and tug of her fingers at the buttons. When Rey moves onto her vest brassiere, pulling it over her and adjusting the straps of it on her shoulders, she gets a cruel, playful inclination. 

If he’s listening, she’ll give him something better to listen to.

The pressure and softness of the brassiere’s strap prompts her, and her thoughts willingly and eagerly go back to the kiss he has yet to brave. She recalls it in its totality: from the way his mouth gradually opened to taste her skin, the blunt pressure of his teeth, the zealous sigh of her name, the slip and hook of his fingers-

Ben clears his throat, chokes on his own saliva.

Rey grins, and promptly bites down on her curled lips; his torment could easily be mistaken for her own.

“So, were you waiting for me here?” she asks, only partly teasing.

“No.” The answer is torn out of him, and it’s clear he is still in the middle of choking. Rey’s grin widens painfully. “Chewie drove me out. He kept projecting… thoughts.”

“Weaponizing his mind to get what he wants.” Rey nods knowingly. “Very clever Wookie.”

When Chewie had used it on her, she had not appreciated the cheap tactic. She sees the appeal, now. 

Smug, Rey pulls at the bottom of her brassiere and seals it snugly around her chest. As she smooths the back of it, she finally takes a peek at Ben. He’s still lying on his back, sprawled out and eyes shut. With his arms dropped at either side of his head, the dark sweater covering him is stretched thin. There’s a slender line of skin beneath the hem. Rey resists the temptation to weaponize her thoughts again. 

Talking has eased the tension, and clears enough steam in her head to think past that thin line of skin. She thinks of Chewie’s possible motives in harassing Ben’s mind, what thoughts would have moved Ben to seek refuge- and she suspects. 

Ever since leaving The Solo, Ben had used his time to repair neglected areas of the Falcon, all while shying away from the cracked and bleeding fault in his NAV seat. Even after showing Ben where she kept the Jedi texts, not once did he touch his lightsaber. However, with Chewie’s tactics, maybe- just maybe...

“Does this mean you finally got around to reading?” she asks. Rey also thinks to get around to change, picking up an emerald tunic clean and folded on the counter; Rose gave it to her more than a year ago now, and it had not been worn once- Rey is, after all, a creature of stubborn habit. But maybe-

“No.”

Ben does not budge a muscle outside of his mouth, and barely even bothers with that. The new tunic hangs lamely in her hand. She stares at him.

“Why not?” 

“I don’t need to.”

Her tunic is discarded, tossed on the stool. A different steam starts to manifest itself. 

“You _don’t need to_ ? You _did not_ drag me back to Kef Bir just to give up-“

His eyebrow twitches. “I didn’t give up.”

Confusion lends itself to clarity, fanning clear the steam so Rey can focus. Her perspective widens, and notices a black mass laid dormant on the bed. Just left of Ben’s head is his lightsaber, hidden in the corner, more rested than him. In the calm, she hears its hushed secret: the harmony of a kyber crystal. Ben’s.

In a swelling, impulsive heartbeat, Rey leaps onto the bed and reaches over Ben. It’s a quick movement, so quick it is not completely certain whether her hand grabs the lightsaber or if her eagerness in the Force pulls it to her. Either way, Ben’s lightsaber is in her hand, and it is just as heavy as it was the last she held it, with crossed wires and unrefined edges, but the core of it weighs balanced in her palm. Healed. 

“Oh, Ben, it’s singing,” Rey radiates. Smiling down at the lightsaber, she effuses the same healing joy Ben’s kyber does from its metal confines. She holds it between herself and Ben, and steers her wide-eyed wonder to him. “How? When? What was it like?”

Exhaustion does little to hold back Ben’s own wonder at her. Gravity pulls a smile from him, and his laughter floats to her. “One question at a time, Rey.”

“When did you do it, you sneak?” She prickles with suspicion and the lightsaber tilts, the blade emitter pointing accusingly at him. “Two hours ago, when you went to eat? When you were ‘fixing things’? Just now? When were you going to tell me?”

Ben lies motionless until the siege of questions is over with. Even after, he does not dare move too quickly for fear of exciting her further. His hand reaches up calmly and wraps around the lightsaber, fingers brushing over Rey’s. The touch shifts her focus, away from her silly interrogation to the intimacy of it.

“It happened a few minutes ago.” Ben’s answer vibrates through her skin; her hand is braced on his shoulder. “Here.” His stomach dips on an exhale, between Rey’s thighs; her legs straddle him. With ease, Ben plucks his lightsaber out of her grasp and lays it back down on the bed; his eyes stay locked on hers. “I was going to tell you.”

The connection between them crackles with intentions.

“Then you came in. In a towel.” Ben’s voice drags, to places where his eyes dare not go. An unbearable friction. Her skin is raw. “Every thought got knocked out of my head. Any other questions?”

Hazily, she does remember having one. It pushes through the swelling pressure of wordless thoughts- hers and his- and comes out breathless for its efforts.

“How did it feel?”

Her persistence sparks a brief smile, but Rey barely gets to register the soft creases at the sides of Ben’s mouth before it’s gone. In the smile’s place comes distance; memory does that to him, pulls him back from her into moments she cannot enter. The door closes, and she suspects why. However, Ben is known- from time to time- to take her completely by surprise.

He cants towards her. The fluorescent lighting catches him, reflects brushstrokes of gold and green in his eyes just before he closes them. Just before he presses his forehead to hers.

There is no door anymore. All is open. She enters.

Rey’s lips rip apart, gasping. _It stings._ His memories are an open wound, and his mind presses on it. The pain splinters through her, sprawling and searing- blood lightning in her veins. There is the slimmest pinhole punctured through the agony, through which she can see the memories. They are blurred and red at first, then unfairly sharp: the betrayal of a master and uncle, the cruelty of an abuser, the death of a friend, the death of hope and a cracked crystal entombed in a bloodied palm. Anguished, she reaches out to hold it-

Her urgency prompts a change. She feels the comforting pressure of Ben’s hand cradling her head, and the palm she reaches for in memory is cleaned, and closed. But the wound is still open, still stinging and tearing into her chest, leaving her breathless-

Ben’s fingers curl into her hair. He breathes. A salve spreads over the wound, cool and damp and tingling. Lightly, ever so lightly, it rubs into every chasm, nurturing every splinter and burn ever felt until the pain subsides. Until it is put to rest beneath healing skin. She sees the clenched palm lax, open.

“It felt just like that,” Ben sighs, weightlessly.

She is back through the door, staring into his eyes. Dark as they are in her shadow, they are so clear. Bright. Like the crystal she saw, whole and reflecting white light in his hand. Ben’s smile returns, small and tender from the memory- from Rey’s closeness. He lingers, forehead brushing against hers. Every stroke of his skin is a tug in their connection, drawing her into the well of feeling within him. 

Confronting the break and bleeding of his kyber crystal, healing it, had simultaneously ripped open and stitched together old wounds. 

The stitches are well put-together, but the bandaging is fresh and promises to need replacing soon. The cold, the hurt and the blistering rage of Ben’s past needs to breathe. And she senses it breathing through the bandaging; however, Rey senses other things finally getting to breathe, too. Whispers of exaltation, patience and peace. Swells of resolve, and pride. Love.

Grinning, Rey sways into that feeling. Her nose brushes up the length of Ben’s, until her bottom lip playfully catches on the tip of his nose. There’s a subdued sound of appreciation from Ben, a soothing trickle in the bond. It bubbles through Rey, and out of her in a little laugh, as she kisses the strong bridge of his nose and skips her lips up to his forehead. 

A stubborn crease remains right in the middle of his brow; what remains of Ben’s past is stuck there, still awake. Rey kisses it to rest. 

The trickle becomes a generous stream of emotion: love, in all its forms.

Ben’s lips part, his breath hot at her throat and chest, and the sheets shyly rustle as his other hand stirs to life. He touches her without thinking- fingers hooked into her bent knee, and his thumb stroking up her clothed thigh. His other hand slips, too- down from her hair and draping on the side of her neck. The touch is wet, a pleasant contradiction of cool water and warm skin. Rey softly croons; Ben’s fingers desperately clench down. His nose flares at the top of her throat and, unwitting, he nuzzles the underside of her jaw as he lowers his head back to the bed. If Ben means to distance his thoughts from her this way, it doesn’t pay off. 

With the bond wide open, no feeling is off-bounds. New ones, or at least ones Rey has never felt so defined before, involuntarily spill out of Ben- primal and loud and explicitly entangled with the thought of her. 

Rey’s blood rushes to the surface of her skin, begging to hear more. Ben’s cheeks are coloring too, in a heated show of want and restraint. Whatever restraint he has doesn’t make it to his eyes. He has no real choice but to look at her, and his gaze is heavy; it strokes her with the same sweet pressure as his hand on her leg, as his thumb on her jaw. A subtle dip of his fingertip, and her mouth falls open with a sigh. 

Ben’s feelings crescendo and shudder through her; her own desire manifests in the grip of her hands on the sheets, on his shoulder, and the gradual cant of her body down to his. The whisper of water, incrementally sliding down from her hair to her neck and chest encourages her. It encourages Ben, too, as his eyes plunge down to her mouth, spill down to her throat, and to her chest to follow the journey of that little water droplet.

If Rey was in the shower, this would be the part when Ben takes her, pushes her onto the bed and puts his lips anywhere water has ever touched her. 

“You’re dripping,” he says instead. The water droplet has, in fact, dripped off her and vanished in his shirt. The fantasy vanishes along with it. Rey frowns. 

“You say that to all the girls, don’t you.”

“Just you.” And he has the cheek to smirk, too, as if that’ll soften the blow of rejection.

Rey rolls her eyes, and immediately heaves off of him. Naturally, the second she turns away and thinks to leave, Ben’s regret reels towards her. The bed jumps as he springs up-

His hand, wide-spread and desperate, presses onto her midriff. Skin to skin. And it’s Exegol and the waterfalls all pressed into one; memory to dream to reality. Her hand clasps down on his, afraid otherwise he would retreat. He doesn’t. 

Ben comes closer. His breath covers her shoulder just before his lips do, pressing down gently on yet another droplet; the kiss is an apology, playing into her daydream. However sweet it is, Rey can sense the barrier remains- holding him back from acting on his own wants. Exasperated, and stubborn, she keeps tense. But then the pressure on her shoulder gives, his lips easing open.

Her match in everything, including stubbornness, Ben remains restrained and only allows himself to test his boundaries with the tip of a tongue. He samples a little part of her, and lightly suckles on the droplet. It’s gone instantly, leaving just his tongue on Rey’s skin, the damp touch of his mouth on her shoulder. The boundaries threaten to dissolve as Ben’s arm coils around her waist and he kisses up the water trail on her neck. Her eyes roll closed, he kisses her earlobe, and her body betrays her resolve. She sighs out delight.

“Just you.” Ben’s promise is quiet, for her alone, caressing her cheek. There are whispered thoughts in that promise: of him wanting her, just her, always her. _Just you. Just wait._ He seals his promise, and his apology, with a kiss to her temple. 

Rey forgave him the second he touched her.

Still. When Rey opens her eyes and sees a towel wizz by in the air and into Ben’s free hand, she can’t stop the scowl from forming.

“I can dry my own hair, Ben,” she says, offended, but even aiming her ridicule at him does nothing. His expression is cripplingly soft.

“I know you can.” The arm she’d like to keep snug around her slips away. Ben’s chin nudges towards the floor. “Sit.”

Begrudgingly, she does so. Rey sits on the floor and Ben adjusts on the bunk behind her, his knees poking into her periphery. And his thighs. Clothed in black trousers. Yet... Rey’s eyes take in the sight, attempting to enjoy what little Ben is offering, when the towel is tossed on her head. It successfully blocks her vision.

“ _Ben_.”

“Whoops.” 

He plays dubious, and slowly drags the towel over her head. The motion gently tugs her back, until she is rested in the palm of his hand; she fits there perfectly. Ben’s fingers dip under to undo her bun and gather her hair together. Casually, he touches the nap of her neck. It’s enough to send her nerves into a fit, shivering through her body and boomeranging back into her head- right beneath his fingertips. Rey’s lips clamp shut, sacrificially rolling between biting teeth to keep from letting out any sounds of delight- or misery.

Sticking to blissful ignorance, Ben silently massages the towel against her scalp, gently rubbing on tight pressure points. It should relax her, and it does at intervals, lulling her eyes closed and her body slack of tension. She realizes this is what it’s like to be taken care of. Soothing, and safe. Intimate. 

It is the last sensation, combined with the tease of Ben’s fingers at her forehead and slipping behind her ears, that makes Rey’s eyes flinch open each time they close. 

“Something on your mind?” Ben’s hands continue to work diligently, but Rey can feel the proud smirk he hides behind her back. Oh, she has something on her mind alright. A few somethings, one of them riling prominently at the front of her skull:

_Asshole._

He chuckles. “Besides that. Since Tatooine, your head’s been filling up.”

“So has yours.”

Ben smooths the towel over Rey’s head one last time, then drops it to the floor. Purposefully this time, his fingers touch her forehead. They draw back, combing through her dried hair. She can hear the drag of his nails, the exact places she parts for him, until he is past her roots. Rey can imagine just how many split ends he must be catching, after neglecting herself for so long. She struggles to remember the last time she cut it. Then her eyes lock on the tunic lying in wait on the stool, and it comes to her- 

_"Your hair’s getting pretty long."_ Rose had just gifted her the tunic, watching as Rey hastily dried her crazed mane after that quick shower Rose was so offended by. Rey had shrugged off the comment, her mind busy with other things- like the mission she’d just washed off her skin. " _I can cut it for you, if you want."_

Rey had never thought someone else would want the job. Or that she would want someone to offer. But she did. _Sure,_ she’d said.

Before Ben, it had been the last and only time someone else had cared for her this way. At least, that she could remember.

Rey doesn’t notice the brush until it lands in Ben’s hand.

“I’ll go first?” he suggests. 

She’s silent for a moment, staring at the brush, head full. The thought of Ben taking care of her hair, taking care _of_ _her_ , floats atop it all. Heavy as her head is, this thought is light. It lightens everything else.

“Okay.”

So, Ben starts. He begins by brushing her hair, gently smoothing out the tousled waves.

“It’s even more difficult than I thought,” he murmurs when he reaches the bottom, and catches on a knot. He’s careful to fix it, untangling it with the gentle nudge of the brush and his fingers. She doesn’t feel a thing from that; she feels everything from him. His own entanglement of feelings. “I’m still adjusting.”

Rey fidgets, wanting to turn around, to see his expression; there’s no real need, though. She knows. Just like she knows the answer before she even asks:

“To what?”

“Living.” Ben gets through the knot, and moves on. “Being alive demands remembering... We both know how fond I’ve been of letting the past go.”

Against her better judgment, Rey snorts. She leans to the left, tilting her head and resting her cheek against Ben’s thigh. “If I remember correctly, which I do, you were fond of letting the past _die_.”

From the adjusted angle, she can see exactly when Ben halts and looks down at her. His expression is skewed, half-grin and half-chagrin; Ben is not as amused as she is by her memory of his dramatic flare. 

“Are you done?”

Rey smiles sheepishly. “Sorry.”

His expression melts immediately. The brush is back to work, and soothing strokes coax her eyes closed. She nuzzles Ben’s thigh, lets her head sink its weight there. Eyes closed and ear cupped to him, the room they’re in is non-existent. She hears only her breath, and the brush through tresses- rising and falling like waves. She is reminded of Kef Bir, the darkness and the peace she had felt there in Ben’s mind. In healing his crystal. In the constant demand for him to remember. 

She opens her eyes, and the Millennium Falcon is- for a moment- a harsh sight.

“I can feel how difficult it is for you to be here,” she says quietly. Her arm slips under, and around his leg. Absently, her fingers trace over the stitching of Ben’s boots. They’re the same boots he wore yesterday, black leather scuffed and worn from working in a hangar and walking into shipwrecks. She can tell he cleans them after each day shift, meticulously waxing them. Nonetheless. Three years tallies itself in the skin. Like it did in hers. Like she used to tally her life away in that AT-AT on Jakku. Rey holds onto Ben.

“You’re meant to be here.” She’s not so quiet this time.

“I know.” Ben nods, and the brush is replaced with his hand. Lightly, he curls his fingers and they sink into the brown of her hair- like hands in soft soil. “Even if I wasn’t ‘meant to’, I’d still be here. As long as you want me…”

His touch is a little too light to be reassuring. He feels like a ghost, fingers less real than when they first touched hands from opposite ends of the galaxy. Rey turns her head, sees him, assuringly here and real...

“... but?”

Ben takes a deep breath. 

“I don't know who I’m supposed to be here. I was a child the last time I stepped foot on this ship, and it was a giant. The Millennium Falcon: a playground of legends, and I spent my whole life playing out the different roles. Solo. Organa. Skywalker. I loved them, but I didn’t fit into any of them… yet every last one of them went with me when I died. When I came back, I left them buried. Just Ben remained, and that felt the most real to me.” 

She almost envies Ben. Not his death, _never_ that, but the death of his name and the purgatory of life after. With no legacies to live up to in this rare afterlife, it’s as close to normal as someone like him can get. It’s the normal Rey’s been seeking since the war, and for a second she thinks they may have it together. In their own little limbo of hyperspace. Here, she’s just Rey and she can lay her head on Ben’s thigh, and he can braid her hair, as if there is nothing else to do. Nothing else to _be_.

But they’ve committed to living, and living demands remembering. His hands remember, knowingly parting her hair, separating the top right into three sections. He weaves them together, sorting separate strands into a whole, into a pattern of present and past folding into one another. At present, it’s Ben braiding Rey’s hair. But in the past it is Ben, four years old and watching from the doorway as Leia Organa sits on the stool and does her hair at the galley. It is Ben being caught by his mother and used to try out different styles in his soft, thick curls. It’s his uncle, Chewie, dozed off in the copilot's seat and Ben criss-crossed on his lap, patiently mimicking his mother’s efforts and being cheered on by his amused father. It’s Luke and Lando admiring a job well done when Ben’s finished and Chewie’s only half-aware of what has happened to him. 

It’s not just Ben, the mechanic from Tatooine, or just a giant in these memories. It’s Ben Solo, and his family.

“Who I was on Tatooine… feels like just another role I tried to fit into, almost right but not quite,” he confesses. “Not here… and I’m adjusting. Poorly.”

Rey lifts her head, letting Ben busy himself with more braiding, knowing he’ll need it when she prods: “so, when Chewie chased you out…”

Ben shakes his head, dismayed. “He barely lifted a mental finger. All it took to make me run were the simplest memories: from my childhood, and then there was just-” The words catch in his throat, and he struggles for a moment to breathe steadily. His recovery time is better now, much better than when they first landed on Kef Bir, or when they left The Solo behind; Rey considers that to have been the point to Chewie’s onslaught of memories- not only to push him into healing his crystal, but also to make remembering his life normal again. Ben sighs shakily, and the words aren’t so painful. They don’t chase him from the room like ghosts.

“It was just my dad, and my mom. I was gone, nowhere and no one. Like I thought I wanted. I didn’t, though. I didn’t want to be forgotten, and I don’t want to forget them. But I honestly don’t know what to do with who they were and who I’m supposed to be.”

Frowning, and fidgeting, Rey tilts her head up and forcefully locks eyes with Ben.

“You weren’t forgotten. You weren’t gone. There were echoes of you here, Ben. Chewie and Leia, they felt those echoes everywhere, and so did I.” His work comes to a standstill, and he stares at her. Rey’s angle is direct, vulnerable, her jugular exposed and her past equally so. Like most of her past, she’s not too fond of it or of sharing it… but she sees value in it now, in going through it if it means being where she is. 

“Not long after Crait, I ended up confiding in Leia about everything: our connection, what happened in the cave, on The Supremacy, that I closed you off and I was having trouble sleeping…” Ben’s gaze saddens, his eyes sagging at the corners. His shoulders do, too. He understands. “Your mother understood, too. She said it was the echoes of what we lost keeping us awake. She told me the only way to sleep was to catch the echo and speak to it, because then it wouldn’t feel so lost... I didn’t get what she meant, not until she did it one day.” 

Rey adjusts, facing forward again. She stares at the door, through it and down the corridor.

“We were heading to the main hold, and I stepped on a loose panel. It creaked- like it always did. But Leia stopped, and smiled, and told me once- when you were six- you wanted to scare Han so you hid under that panel and waited to jump out at him. Only…” Rey grins, fondly echoing Leia’s amusement and love. “What ended up scaring the stars out of your father was thinking he’d lost you. And the whole time Leia was remembering, talking about how Han panicked and screeched at Chewie to turn the ship around, afraid he’d left you in a hangar somewhere- a sitting duck for his debt collectors- ...I had this feeling like you were right there, just under my feet, mustering up the courage to come out and say sorry, that you were just hiding, and didn’t mean for anyone to worry…”

Rey doesn’t bother tilting her head back again. Ben’s thoughts act predictably, following a known pattern and stringing together into contrition. Instinctively, she mirrors the feeling. Then, just as quickly, she grows impatient with it, and rejects it. 

“They wouldn’t care what you do with your life, as long as you’re alive. And happy.” It shouldn’t need saying, but it’s an echo of his family. So she speaks to it, and Ben doesn’t feel so lost anymore. 

“So, what makes you happy, Ben?”

He’s silent, listening for an echo of himself. He catches one. 

“Flying,” he answers. Then, he smiles and says, “being with you.”

Sweet as it is, “that’s a very short list.”

He shrugs. “It’s concise.”

“It needs work,” Rey scoffs, but she lets go of the argument. It feels better to lean back onto the bunk, into Ben’s hands as he cares for her. Whatever he’s shaping into her hair, he does it with a meticulous calm and a simplicity of movement, no matter how complex the twist or turn. Rey remembers admiring that in how he fought- as if dancing; strategized choreography balanced with the expressiveness of free-form poetry. And she remembers something else, just as harmoniously crafted by him.

“... what about calligraphy?”

Ben’s fingers falter and he grimaces, embarrassed. “I guess my mother would tell you about that.”

“She did one better,” Rey says gleefully, her entire face stretched pleasantly into a grin. “Leia showed me one of the little letters you wrote when she was away on political business. It was very cute.”

“She kept those?” His humiliation snaps right into surprise.

“Isn’t that what mothers do?”

The genuine undertone of the question subdues them both. 

Quietly, Ben lifts a hand and reaches for something only he and Leia would know how to find. A small silver case, tucked in one of the dusty corners of the galley, awakes, moves, and sits gladly on Ben’s hand. He opens it and rummages inside. When he’s done, there’s the flap and click of a lid shutting. Without a word, he places the case on Rey’s raised knee. Curious, she opens it and glances inside. 

Hairpins of all kinds greet her: simple metals one and others with softly gemmed designs of leaves and creatures. Leia’s collection.

“Yours,” Ben drops at the end of her thought.

She snaps the case shut.

“Ben, I can’t-”

“Yes, you can.” The counter-argument is made definitive by the landing of a pin in her hair. “It’s not like Chewie or I will get any use out of them…” Though, memory argues that both of them did get use out of the pins in the past- willingly or otherwise. Ben smiles; it’s nostalgic and hopeful, and so reminiscent of his mother. “She’d want you to have them.”

One final pin is slipped in, and a rush of contentment blankets her from behind. 

“All done,” Ben says.

Despite all her see-sawing over it, Rey grips the case in her hand and rushes over to the galley, where a small handheld mirror lies face down. She eagerly scoops it up and looks at herself. She is herself, but it’s different. 

Where she would normally see three buns stacked and bobbing together, her hair moves freely. Long bits at the front that would have been considered an obstacle are raised away and craftily utilized to frame her face. Two french-braids spread out from the part in her hair, loosely following the curve of her hairline before drifting back to the crown of her head. She cranes with curiosity to see the back, reaching with her hand to touch. Rey feels the intricacies of the braids meeting and curling into one another, into a bun crafted by Ben’s hands and held together by Leia’s pins. Her fingers trace over the curve of finely jeweled leaves, no doubt as green as the grass of her dream world. 

Rey is herself, but it feels different. New, yet old; the shape of her past is remade by those she loves and who love her. And her heart is full. But so is her head.

“Your turn.”

Soft as Ben’s reminder is, Rey still flinches. She’s managed to go hours deflecting, putting a mirror up to Ben, that having it turn on her is glaring. 

She avoids the glare by turning her attention to the tunic on the stool. Finally, Rey unfolds it and puts it on. It’s airy, giving her space to move and adjust in the newness of it. The long sleeves cover where she would normally wrap cloth, and the green of it is so lush compared to the sand-tones she’s used to. Rey loves it, and it’s comfortable, but she also knows it would be useless in the desert; she itches to take it off and don the uniform of Jakku. As she always has. It’s an irrational habit, preparing for a sentence she doesn’t have to serve anymore. It finally gets her to admit:

“I’m not adjusting so well, either.”

“I’ve noticed.”

Rey sighs, sits down on the stool, and thinks: the room has gotten more use in one day than it had in four years. Rey feels the same about herself, like she’s been stuck in carbonite and is only now thawing out. There’s nausea, and blindness, to deal with; she’s starting to see clearly now what Ben must’ve been seeing since first stepping onto the Falcon.

“As much as you enjoy forgetting the past, I’ve been just as keen about preserving it. But I can see now- it’s been preserving me. In the last two days, I’ve felt myself starting to move: on Tatooine, just before we found each other again, when I let myself mourn your death; and again on Kef Bir, when the Force made me remember the worst parts of myself, the worst feelings and urged me to embrace them.”

“Did you?”

Rey looks at Ben, and she has the word _yes_ ready in her mouth- but her tongue dries up. He waits patiently, and absorbs the emotions as they roll through her; as she had with him. And the movements are familiar to them both. Like his anger, hers is static and scatters with infinite sources and no real end. Her fear moves more discreetly, so discreetly that for a time she fooled herself into thinking it was defeated. But it’s not, and neither is the core it leeches off of. She feels it all there, inside her, and Ben does too. It’s not as terrifying to feel as it used to be, but...

“No,” Rey admits quietly, just barely shaking her head. “Not entirely. I’m trying- it’s just... I never stopped having trouble sleeping. Sometimes, it was your echoes that kept me awake but other times… it was one I couldn’t catch. Until last night. I had a dream… but it felt more like a vision, like the ones I used to have of Ahch-To. I never saw this place before, but I was being called to it… like I belonged there.”

Eyes drifting down to the bed, to how Ben’s hand presses into it and creases it, reminds her: of her hand pressed to the soil, searching for answers; her hand clutched onto sheets with only questions in her head. And suddenly her anger is more scattered than usual, her fear less discreet. 

She breathes out slowly, through the nose, and calms. “Before I could make out why or what that place was to me… it died, and I was back on Exegol. Then, I woke up.”

“Alone.”

It’s not a question Ben poses, and there is no follow-up to it. There is, however, a great weight of history on the word; it carries the burden of realizing a horrible and obvious mistake. Rey looks at Ben, at his understanding, and she nods.

“Yes. Alone.”

Ben pushes off the bed. In two steps, he is with her and wrapping his arms around her shoulders. Rey leans into the embrace, her face momentarily buried in his sweater. She breathes in the sheltering scent of it. He bends down, and kisses her head. 

“I’m sorry,” he says into her hair. “I didn’t mean for you to worry.”

Rey smiles into his chest; the anger becomes more rested, and the fear isn’t something she has to worry about anymore- not with Ben. She reaches for his arm, and holds on lightly to his sleeve.

“I know,” she assures him. Her vision is clearing more and more and she can see through the fear of abandonment she awoke with, to the core of it. Ben can see it, too. He always has.

“... the vision… do you think it’s about your parents?” Ben frames it as a question to make it land softer, to give her room to say yes or no; a privilege he is not known for affording her in the past. Rey impulsively takes advantage of it.

“Maybe it was just a dream.” 

“Don’t doubt yourself.” He leans back. It’s clear the physical room he gives is to balance out the mental closeness. His eyes are intensely determined on hers. “It has meaning. We’ll find it.”

The ‘it’, Rey knows, is in reference to the planet she dreamed of- not the meaning of the dream itself. He’s already concluded its significance, as she has. However, when it comes to family, she has not been the best at finding the _correct_ significance. Doubt, on this particular subject, is a healthy and reasonable thing to have; she would have done better, had she always sprinkled just a little bit of doubt-

“Rey, that’s me talking,” Ben butts in to scold her. She rolls her eyes.

“Yeah, well, sometimes when you talk- it makes sense!”

He grins. “Sometimes?”

Rey’s eyebrows shoot up, daring him to argue on two fronts successfully. His grin shrugs at her. He concedes- but only on one front. 

“I was probably the first in line to say I’m not a fan of your family, and I’m not,” Ben admits freely, and she kind of adores how he sticks to his grudges. “But, if it means helping you sleep, we should try to... ‘catch it’.”

He smiles, enjoying the way his mother’s words sound when he says them. There’s a glow to him, a healthiness, and Rey adores it. She also kind of envies it, and she knows why, and she knows Ben is right. It’s frustrating, to say the least.

“How do we catch something that is… _nothing?_ My parents made sure to become no one, and I have no names to say! I barely have faces to remember!” 

Ben’s hands stroke at her back, where Rey’s anger manifests itself. It charges up and down her spine and moves between his fingers. She takes the silent suggestion to breathe, and steadies herself on the motion of Ben’s hand. Rey huffs, restless and tired, and rests her forehead on his chest.

“I only know the legacy they never wanted me to have,” she breathes, not wanting to or braving to say the name of that legacy out loud. Even in the safety of Ben’s arms. “I haven’t come to terms with what they did to keep me from it.”

Ben hugs her to him, one hand in her hair, and she feels the subtle pressure of his mother’s pins. 

“I know,” he says. Of course he does.

Of course he wants to guide her towards the right choice in this moment, despite his own misgivings. And she loves him for it.

“Any number of planets, in multiple systems, could fit the description of my dream,” she mumbles, but she doubts her own doubt now.

Ben nods slowly. “I know. Except this planet feels like home.”

Rey sighs and tilts her head up. She looks at Ben, doubtless and mildly frustrated that it even needs clarification. “Home isn’t a planet for me, Ben.”

Wordlessly, he bends down and kisses her forehead. Ben’s lips are full and fully pressed to her skin, and between them are all the words she needs: _I know. I feel it too._

“I meant,” Ben corrects himself with a rueful smile, “it was home for your parents…” 

His expression shifts, turning pensive and then sharpening. He catches an idea, and his gaze becomes very direct. 

“Show me the dream.” The second Rey hears it, he does. Ben winces, and recants. “Please.”

Rey grins and, truth be told, her satisfaction in his politeness has very little to do with proper social conduct. The magic word is just a little more magical and sweet when he says it. Sensual, even. It’s pleasing to her, to know that what Ben requests is something she would willingly give to him and no one else: intimacy.

She opens her mind to him, and shares the dream with all its intricacies. He feels what she felt: the rested air, as though the place they stood in had known more peace than all others; the well-nourished ground and soft grass; the waterfalls and the mountain range watching and protecting from afar.

When the dream ends, she watches Ben. He’s pensive again, diving headfirst into his own thoughts to find meaning for hers.

“Do you recognize it?” she asks, daring to- possibly- hope. Ben nods, and hope sprouts.

“From stories, maybe,” he says, his gaze still sifting through pages of memory. “My mother once told me about my grandmother’s home planet and it would make sense since, well, part of my family and yours came from there.” The sifting stops. He has a name. “Naboo.”

“Is it still…”

“Yes. It survived the wars.” Hope is a weed taking over Rey’s entire chest. It wraps around her heart and squeezes. It squeezes Ben’s too and, on a reflex, he smiles. “Mom said she’d take me there one day, but that was before…”

The smile drifts, and turns into a grimace. The hope she feels pumping out of him feels very motivated by self-preservation. “We could go there right now if you wanted.”

Rey chuckles. “As wonderful and tempting as that sounds…” She sits back and puts her hands on his chest, sliding them up to hug the back of his neck. Bracing him. “We have to go to Corellia first, and we’re about to pop out of light speed. You’re not getting out of this.”

“It was worth the try.” Trepidation undercuts Ben’s humor. They can both sense the approach of the unknown, and she can sense Ben trying to calculate and predict it all: the politics and possible outcomes, Rey’s _friends_. The sum of his calculations comes out as one breathy, nervous chuckle. Not knowing what comes next is as lively as it gets, more so than remembering, and the vulnerable weightlessness of it makes Ben feel like a child. He looks youthful, like he had when she awoke in his arms and gave him a future he had never expected to have- brief as it was at the time. Rey’s heart floats, floating in a smile, floating into the thoughts of how that future is much longer now. Unknown as it is, it’s theirs to have.

“Naboo will be our reward, after this,” Rey promises them both, already imagining how wonderfully alive and unknown such an adventure would be. “Even if it amounts to nothing, I want to go.” She trails a hand onto Ben’s face, floating it over a shy laugh line; she imagines how deep it would grow in that grass, with her. “With you.”

“It’s a date.” 

The laugh line deepens, multiplies, as Ben smiles happily into Rey’s hand. She traces one, and then the second line from his cheek down to his chin. Her thumb rests there, in the dip of Ben’s chin, for a pause as she enjoys the reverie of being on Naboo with him. With him, as she had wanted in her sleep… as she had seen in her daydream. 

Following the longing, her thumb drifts up creek- not up the laugh lines, which fade as her touch changes intention. The hand on his neck slivers into his hair, and her thumb- it strokes the curve of his bottom lip. This touch is different to when she kisses him. More deliberate. Aware. 

Ben’s breath rushes above her fingertip, over his upper lip. She lifts her thumb to touch it-

He jerks back, sucking his breath back in, as if jolted awake.

“We should head to the cockpit,” he says, grabbing her hands and gently guiding them off. She sighs, resigned, as Ben moves towards the door.

Then, impulse snaps into her, slides her off the stool and makes her grab Ben’s hand just as it presses on the door release. Oddly enough, the impulse has Rose’s voice. " _You’re missing out on the best part."_

Rey’s focus is singular, nailing Ben to the spot even when she lets go of his hand. “There’s still something on my mind.”

The door opens. Ben doesn’t walk through it. Though he wants to. Oh, he very loudly and desperately wants to. He lowers his hand from the controls and turns to Rey.

“I know,” he admits quietly. The trepidation she felt trickle off him before about Corellia is nothing compared to what rolls off him now. Combined with her own nerves on the matter, Rey nearly caves under it. Nearly.

She takes a deep breath. 

“The bond we share is an intimacy I will never have with another,” she starts carefully, treading to find the right words. “When you left, I never wanted it with anyone else, and I’m so happy that it’s ours. _Only_ ours. It’s more than what others ever experience, but I…” Rey fidgets, blushing at the intense way Ben listens and watches her- and she nearly backs out, but she doesn’t. She can’t. 

“I still want more. That’s one of the worst bits of me, one I _actually have_ embraced now: the hunger. On Jakku, I wanted things I couldn’t have or thought I didn’t need. And I still want so much. I want more with you. Of you. I want you to look when I’m dressing, I want you to see me, and to touch me. I want everything, everything that comes with a relationship- I want it. The only thing I don’t want is to wait. For some reason, you do.” 

Rey takes steps towards Ben, closing what little distance he thinks is safe. His jaw clenches, his exhale coming out tattered and flaring through his nostrils. The door closes, shutting them in again with every feeling- and irrationally it echoes how they were on that elevator years ago, when she could feel Ben tearing in two trying to keep away from her, to keep from telling her how much he wanted her. She doesn’t understand.

“Why?”

She sounds distraught, and Ben looks it- like he’s not even fully sure himself. His eyes shoot down to the floor and dart around for an answer she’ll accept. He sighs, opening his mouth to say-

The ship shudders. They re-enter real space. Chewie’s call vibrates through the door. Muffled as it is, they both know what he’s saying:

Corellia.


	6. For Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Millennium Falcon finally sets eyes on its destination: Corellia. With hopes of seeing beloved faces, resolving old grievances, and planning a life with Ben, Rey eagerly reaches for her friends' home of Coronet. But the lights, and shadows, of the New Republic's capital reveal a present that could darken her future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forgive me for the wait... and the length of this. I could not be tamed. <3

What is Ben waiting for?

Rey’s question makes a hollow home in space, centering between her and Ben. It oscillates and accumulates every possible answer Rey’s restless mind can conjure; they gather like particles, light and heavy, nearby and far stretched— swelling, reaching critical mass. And so the gravity of her question pulls inward desperately, hungrily towards the center where Ben’s answer should be. Unfortunately, Ben finds a way to quickly escape the pull.

He looks away from her and presses on the release. The door opens again; he already has one foot out of the bedroom. 

“Chewie will need help landing.” Ben uses the easy way out, and his hushed tone hints to his own shame; he knows better. It is his better nature that hesitates. Ben glances back at Rey, at her unresolved confusion, that signature pinch of regret wrinkling his forehead. His smile is sheepish, and his promise gaunt: “we’ll talk about it later.”

That last word dries Rey’s throat. She fixes her eyes on the ground as Ben steps into the corridor—

 _Later_ : a word Rey used often to sate her hunger on Jakku. Like polystarch, _later_ was rationed out in times of need and filled her without promising much flavour or nutrition. But it took up space where there once was nothing; _when will my parents come back for me?_ _Later_. Whenever doubt threatened to starve, later sustained her. Later was enough.

It is not enough anymore. Later leaves a bad taste in her mouth. The hunger rages on—

“Soon.” 

The word drops from Ben’s lips, saturated and sweet. Eager to fill her up.

Generously broad fingers feed into Rey’s palm. Ben holds her hand, gently tugging her forward. When Rey looks up, a feast of emotion is offered to her. There are still bountiful servings of hesitance and shame (a double serving of the latter now for causing her worry), but Ben’s smile is steadier and his promise stronger: “we’ll talk about it _soon_.”

He’s a fast learner. But he could be a little faster.

Indignant and reluctant to leave her question unanswered, Rey drags her weight.

Though, as much as she wants to pull him back in, into the black hole of a situation he’s created… or at least to let the door close and guillotine his arm (a possibility his rueful smile is fully aware of)... Rey sighs. She swallows the black hole and steps out beside him; he won’t be able to escape it if she brings it along. Rey warns him of as much when the door shuts behind them. Her fingers sift between his and squeeze. Sharply. Demanding a little more from him in order to sate her. 

“ _Very_ soon.”

Ben accepts her correction with a speechless chuckle. 

Despite the urgency with which he had excused himself to ‘help’ Chewie, he idles and observes Rey in all her discontent and impatience. The desire behind the frontline of her emotions, and the openness of her words before, are easily read in the way she holds his hand so decidedly. 

His feelings swing again; from amusement, he drifts back to hesitance and fatefully forward... to longing. 

Bending towards Rey, Ben lifts their entwined hands and kisses the back of hers. Indulgently. Her blood instantly thickens from the stout syrup of it, her head light. Even as Ben tilts his head upwards, his bottom lip willingly remains in her pull. Dragging against her skin, a plump and heavy object of intent, Ben’s lip responds to her pull with a reminder of his equal and opposite force. His gaze is just as enticing; it slowly drips down her arm and up to meet her eyes, that sweet brown color of his irises darkening richly the longer she pulls at him— and he at her. Yet Rey can’t figure out his exact intentions, or who Ben is indulging more: himself or her. If her, he would follow the path of least resistance and drag that lip towards her own. Among other places. If him...

“As soon as we’re alone again,” he vows and it’s so intimate, close, she believes just maybe he means— “we’ll talk.”

_Tease._

Rey’s blush is still visible as she marches into the cockpit. She’s sure it can be seen from Corellia. Yet, somehow, Chewie’s first comment is about something else entirely. Thus entirely derailing her crude thoughts.

Sliding into the captain’s chair, Rey gawks at her copilot. “Ben braided your hair like this, too?”

“No. I did not,” Ben huffs from behind. The second he’s close enough, he drapes an arm over Rey’s headrest, his eyes glued to the windshield. Since Chewie already gained clearance to enter atmosphere, the reality of Corellia looms impressively on the other side of the glass. 

Despite the relative frequency of Rey’s visits to this planet, the sight of it still strikes a loud chord in her mind and puts her in a brief daze of admiration. The light casts differently now, like a flipped reflection of her memory, as the large continent gradually turns towards night. Grand arrays of golden lights shimmer alive. The jewel of Corellia, Coronet, shows off its beauty and immensity with those skillfully gridded city lights, which burst outward from a dark expanse of ocean and reach into the continent. Its reach is impressive— and daunting. When Rey first visited Coronet at Finn’s request, she instantly understood why the New Republic set up shop here. 

As Rey and Chewie guide the Millennium Falcon towards the gulf of the continent, where Coronet’s lights are densest, Chewie is still lamenting over Rey’s apparently superior braid.

“I didn’t know how fond you were of my hairstyling,” Ben retorts wryly. The lines on his forehead crease upwards, smiling briefly and quite suspiciously. “Maybe you’ll wake up to a nice surprise tomorrow.”

Chewie is in immediate distress; Rey not so much. However, her being in stitches does sound, technically, distressing. Is this why Ben’s knuckles brush against her cheek?

Rey is instantly stunned. Her open, toothy smile freezes in place as she glances up, in delightful awe of Ben’s similarly content expression. His knuckles drift and idle beneath her chin, as if placing the captured moment of her laughter on a pedestal. And, as Rey’s smile softens from touch, so does Ben’s. How peculiar, she ponders, that a mere candle flicker of his smile can warm her entirely. 

More peculiar, and wonderfully so, is the casual touch of Ben in front of another.

Though Chewie is not much of a public audience, Rey is sharply aware of Ben’s hesitance to show affection in front of anyone— broken only in that moment of his shattering earlier that day, when he clutched onto Rey for dear life in front of Chewie, in the light of his father. This touch, now, is different. Not done out of desperation or need, but want. His thumb graces across her chin and a wave of relief follows. A form of normalcy she’s never felt or seen before starts to take shape.

Ben must be feeling and seeing it too, catching himself hope for it, because his mouth twitches as if to say ‘ _oh.’_

“So,” is what Ben says instead. His hand awkwardly returns to his side, but Rey still feels the tickle of his happiness at the corner of her lips. Her smile dances upwards; Ben’s uneasily slips in the opposite direction. “What’s our strategy?” 

The whiplash dizzies Rey’s smile. It stumbles, and tilts to the side.

“Ben,” she stiffly chuckles. “We’re not heading into battle.”

“Oh?”

It’s not the _oh_ she was wanting. It’s quick and quiet, deceptively so. His skepticism is a shrill, and insistent alarm in the Force. 

It takes one glance at Chewie, who is making quite the show out of fiddling with his chest hair, for Rey to realize her optimism about this visit is flying solo in the cockpit. 

With gritted teeth, Rey refocuses on maneuvering the ship towards Coronet’s eastern harbor. She can already see the tell-tale dome of the New Republic’s engineering annex amidst the bay fog. However, familiarity ends there. Everything she is accustomed to seeing in the early morning presents itself differently now. 

The building’s grey facade and the soft blue hues of the morning harbor are gone. Sunset sets the fog on fire. The dome is sunburned orange and appears solitary amidst smoke. Memory allows Rey to visualize the outlines of well-worn factories spread out in front of the water and the clustered spires of the city behind their destination. Memory assures her, despite first impressions, only good things can come from their arrival here.

“There are ill feelings, naturally,” Rey reluctantly admits as they approach the building and hover above the dome. The center of it cracks open like an egg, revealing a shutter-like mechanism that pulls away until a hangar is revealed below. Glancing down at it suddenly makes Rey rather queasy. She frowns; Ben’s skepticism has infected her, a stomach virus of butterflies agitating her. “But you were pardoned. It’ll be fine. No one here has your flare for drama.”

Ben remains a dubious devil on her shoulder. All the while, Chewie’s eyeballing her, practically hurdling a cut-out of Poe’s face at her head. 

Somehow, Rey manages to ignore the terrible twosome long enough to safely and definitively land the ship.

Before the engine even stops growling, Rey is turned in her seat. Glaring pointedly at Ben. He reacts with a rather convincing impression of a fathier in headlights.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to,” Rey rebukes, rolling her eyes as she hauls herself out of the captain’s chair. Her eyes nail into Ben’s skull as she steps up to him. “You’ll help Chewie with the supplies. I’ll deal with the registrar.”

She’s halfway down the corridor when Ben calls to her from the main hold. Her nerves, and his, get the better of her. Rey’s tongue whips around before her body does.

“Ben, for kriff’s sake—”

But it isn’t exactly a pessimistic battle plan Ben has in his hand when she turns around. 

It’s her lightsaber.

“Shouldn’t leave this lying around,” Ben says, his attention peaked by Rey’s agitation. His eyes closely follow her mouth as it unwillingly goes from exasperation to a sharp wince. “A Jedi’s lightsaber is their life.”

Part of that reminder, or perhaps every part of it, riles Rey’s nerves right back to their previous rattled state. Her eyebrows shoot up as she snatches her lightsaber from Ben. 

“Oh?” The loaded nature of that one word immediately throws Ben on edge. “And where’s yours?”

The question twists the corner of Ben’s mouth. His head dips to the side. “I’m not a Jedi.”

Her mouth opens, shuts; those same words slam into her teeth, caught before they can be thrown back at Ben. The pain of its impact shivers through her jawbone, and down her spine. There’s grief in the spasms. The words _I’m not a Jedi_ is an epitaph Rey began etching three years ago. Would she, like Ben, set it in stone and remember its brief life in passing? 

The grief she feels is two-fold, now. She studies the lightsaber to avoid Ben’s steady sight, knowing full-well he doesn’t want her pity. He had never wanted to be a Jedi, not really.

 _“A pilot like his father_ — _and his mother’s worst nightmare. Or so I thought,”_ Leia had once confided in her, laughing (just one sharp note away from crying) at memories Rey could only imagine. Ben had wanted, once, to be a pilot like his father. Then a Jedi, like his uncle. A sith, like his grandfather. Grasping at titles tied to family, to tie him to them. But, as he’d confessed to her, those ties had tangled into nooses. He’d just cut free of them, and here she is throwing them right back around his neck. 

Rey frowns and bites down on the sharp edge of her tongue, hoping to soften it; towards him, and towards herself. Unfortunately, a question remains stubbornly on the tip and it is painfully serrated.

_I’m not a Jedi, am I?_

Impulsively, she searches for the answer in the small, hidden compartment where Luke and Leia’s lightsabers rest. Or, more honestly, Rey tries to postpone answering the question entirely. 

“Rey.”

Ben’s call stills Rey, her lightsaber hung in her hand like a casket over its freshly dug grave. The severe ridge of Ben’s brows, protruding like one giant distressed nerve, would be funny if it wasn’t protruding in her direction. They stare at each other in a stalemate of stubbornness: her with a lightsaber dangling precariously over its tomb and Ben idling in the corridor despite Chewie’s calls for help in the forward cargo hold.

“I won’t need it,” is Rey’s excuse.

The gravity of Ben’s expression gives slightly. His eyebrows nip upwards, his pre-existing condition of skepticism acting out. His mouth opens, an uncomfortably acute observation on the tip of his tongue—

Another troubled soul makes its presence known. Chewie’s calls are now enraged howls.

Rey grooms a smirk. “And if you think I can protect you from a Wookie’s wrath, you’re sorely mistaken.” 

Ben’s mouth clamps shut so tight, his lips push against one another and eventually droop into a frustrated pout. His eyes glance towards the cargo hold he was supposed to be in at that very minute, but his feet remain obstinately pointed in Rey’s direction. She can see the conversation he wants to have with her dangling like a carrot in front of his face, which does give Rey a sense of vengeful satisfaction as well as relief when he looks back at her in resignation. He’s no stranger to angry Wookies and knows better than to keep this one waiting. And yet.

Chewie’s yells are getting colorful. And Rey gets bold.

“We’ll talk about it later?” Rey tosses Ben’s words right back at him. The effect is immediate. It’s a suckerpunch sigh and a beguiled smile; the look of it suits Ben beautifully. 

Shaking off the smile, he bounces back as quickly as she expected— and dreaded. Ben’s eyes in particular have a miraculous elasticity when it comes to emotion, slingshotting from one extreme to the other at hyperspeed. The density returns to them, anxious and solemn about all manner of things she doesn’t have the tools to fully weigh, and all of it packed into a promise he seems to make more so to himself than to her: “ _soon_.” 

Before Rey can turn the tables again and ask Ben what’s on his mind, and before Chewie inevitably flips a crate, Ben leaves her.

Rey glances back at her lightsaber, heavier and stranger the longer she holds it at arm’s length. Despite her just conclusion that she won’t need it, she hesitates in letting go. Her gaze leans towards her holster, tucked in the drawer. Ben’s furrowed brows nudge at her thoughts. The skeptical butterflies from before unfurl their wings in her stomach. Rey sighs.

The holster clicks happily, snugly, around her waist. So does the lightsaber.

So, when Rey moves and the little cluster of nervous butterflies begin to metamorphosize in her belly, she focuses on the secure pressure of the leather holster at her hip where the lightsaber weighs it down. When she reaches the boarding ramp, an infestation of conduit worms in her belly making her short-circuit and hesitate at the controls, she thinks of the cool brush of her lightsaber against the inside of her arm. She breathes.

“Everything will be fine.”

She doesn’t need her lightsaber. But it does feel good to have it again, that soft heartbeat at her side.

Rey encourages herself with a smile, and releases the boarding ramp. 

Despite the sensory overload of the hangar flooding in as the ramp lowers, of grating machinery and the bustle of parts and bodies and conversation, she keeps her calm front and center. She keeps it steady and aimed, right at the person standing at the end of the ramp with a datapad for a face.

“Name and last port of call.” 

The stiff order comes from somewhere behind the datapad. Not expecting such abrasiveness, Rey clamps up around her own name. Until she sees the slight jiggle of laughter through the person’s khaki uniform, and the stubborn cowlick of black hair just to the side of the datapad.

Rey’s lips spring up in a beaming smile, around a lovely name. “Rose!”

The poor engineer barely gets a millisecond to drop the pathetic disguise, as Rey immediately scoops her up into an overzealous hug. As Rey squeezes, Rose’s giggles bubble out over Rey’s shoulder.

“What gave me away?” Rose chuckles, attempting to hug Rey back but failing miserably to slide out from within her friend’s tight hold. With her toes barely touching the ground, and her arms squished inside what feels like a trash compactor, it’s a miracle Rose can even breathe. So, she settles for awkwardly patting Rey’s arm.

“I missed you so much,” Rey gushes, still smiling in absolute relief as she finally, finally, releases Rose. The two friends go still then, absorbing the new details from last they’d seen each other. The residue of concern that has always clouded Rose’s eyes when she looks at Rey blinks away now, and her smile widens at the clear change she sees.

She gives Rey a proper hug. “I missed you, too,” she says, and the words cover much more than just time apart. And it feels like she’s hugging the whole of Rey, wrapping her up in welcome and love. Rey sinks into it, resting her head on Rose’s shoulder and breathing in the nostalgic scent of workshop and kindling. 

Besides Ben, she hasn’t hugged anyone in over a year. She hadn’t let herself feel that warmth or attachment. As if attuned to the Force herself, Rose responds to that ache and embraces Rey tighter.

“Is this the tunic I gave you?” Rose finally asks what’s been itching at the back of her throat… or at least one of the questions back there. She pulls back to take another look at Rey, her eyes lighting with curiosity when they land on Rey’s braided hair. “It suits you.”

The reminder of Rose’s gift does not mix safely with Rey’s nerves, or her newly welcomed feelings, and she bursts forward to hug Rose. Again.

“Rey—” Rose laughs, slightly frazzled. “Oh, this is nice, it’s just—” the datapad taps against Rey’s spine as Rose instinctively hugs her back—”it’s just I do _actually_ have to log in the Falcon.”

“Oh!” Rey exclaims, springing back and laughing at herself. “Right, of course!”

With an abashed smile, Rose turns to her datapad and starts typing— and comes to an abrupt halt. Her finger stuck to the screen, Rose’s face scrunches inward only to, in a blink, expand in surprise.

“Hm.”

Rey fidgets, oddly anxious; the image of Ben pops into mind. “...is something wrong?”

“Oh”—Rose glances up from the screen—“um”—a quick scan of Rey’s face, a puzzled look, and she’s glued back to the datapad— “No! No.” The shake of her head is exaggerated, and therefore extremely suspicious. “I just need to scan your fingerprint for the database.”

Rey exchanges her fidgeting for a frown. “What database?”

“Well, recently the coalition—no, sorry”— Rose flinches and shakes her head again, more naturally this time—“the _Senate_ _—_ gosh, seriously gotta get used to that now! Anyway! The _Senate_ voted to start this sort-of galaxy-wide database of Republic citizens. It’s kinda why I wasn’t around the last time you came by— honestly, it feels like I haven’t seen the sun in months, or had a life… in months… I mean, I did volunteer to design the database but _wow._ Anyway. For now, we’re just collecting information from interplanetary travellers when they dock. Really, the last port of call should’ve already scanned you, but seeing as it was Tatooine…” Rose rolls her eyes and shrugs in exasperation. “I’m surprised they even logged you into the database at all.”

“What was put in?”

The stern edge to Rey’s question jolts Rose to the point of waving the datapad like a white flag. 

“Oh, it’s nothing serious! Just basic info. Your name and where you docked last. See?” Rose offers Rey the datapad. Though, despite her eagerness to show and tell, Rose’s finger is hesitant as it points to the screen. “Right here... Rey Skywalker”—Rey’s neck prickles, sensing Rose’s inquisitive eyes on her— “Last documented in the port of Mos Eisley, Tatooine. There seems to be quite the time gap between there and here—”

The prickle is no longer just at the back of Rey’s neck. “I didn’t realize—”

The prickle manifests itself in Rey’s surroundings: a large clamoring—of voices and metal—of clattering blaster rifles. At the forward-side of the Falcon.

That prickle of unease isn’t just her own anymore—

“Ben!”

Not sparing a second of explanation to Rose, Rey darts off in the direction of Ben’s distress. The source is easy enough to discover, as she rounds about the Falcon and stumbles to a stop in front of a human blockade. 

A loose fence of five armed guards encircle the area around the ship’s loading doors, where Ben and Chewie should be with their cargo of scavenged tech and materials. The guards are armored in amber plates of plastoid; plastoid most likely repurposed from seized First Order reserves. Rey had seen these armored guards before, but only on the rare occasion she stepped onto turbulent planets— where territories were still being disputed in the aftermath of the war, and Republic representatives needed protecting.

But here, of all places?

“It’s like I said,” the guard blocking Rey’s immediate view states, sounding too young and unnerved to be wearing that kind of armor. She wants to yank that helmet off his head, and that blaster out of his hands and order him home. “He looks a lot like the First Order’s Supreme Leader— you know: the second one.”

“The resemblance must be uncanny.”

She can’t see him for some reason, but that’s Ben alright. His sarcasm shoots right over the guards’ heads and hits Rey in the chest, releasing a strangely relieved and equally annoyed sigh.

 _Ben_. Her thought is a warning.

“Freeze!” —Ben clearly doesn’t heed the warning; the guards’ armor rattles— 

“Don’t move!” 

—their stances and blasters raising to absolute attention— 

”Step away from the cargo!” 

—and she sees him. 

As Rey hurtles through the guards, she sees him: crouched over the crate he’d been lowering just before the confrontation, hands slightly raised at his sides, fingers splayed, his head turned in her direction— he’d heard her, after all— and frozen that way. Because his turning in search of her had tripped their alarm. It trips up the young guard, his finger stuttering on the trigger of his blaster—

“NO!” Rey screams, her hand rising—reaching, desperate; her body shoots in front of Ben’s— 

The guard’s finger flinches—

The blast hits like starfire into her chest. 

But not physically. The bolt hisses blue and chaotic where she has it stalled just before her palm. The energy of it, the rage of it, heats her skin and spreads. Makes it hard to focus on rational thoughts. 

Ben is not helping the matter either. He is no longer crouched, but standing at full height behind Rey. A tsunami wave of emotion from him casts an even longer shadow than his body— and there isn’t a single droplet of comedy in there. It sends an involuntary, overwhelming ripple up her spine. 

Rey flicks her arm downward. The bolt redirects. It burns through the cement floor.

“Please set your blasters to stun,” Rey addresses the guards, her eyes nailed to the hole in the ground. Despite her best efforts to shove her wrath into that little crater, there’s just not enough room for it all. Her voice is a degree too heated. “There has _clearly_ been a misunderstanding.”

“Master Rey, with all due respect, please step aside,” a different guard voices. She sounds like the one in charge, and the others' reaction to her (to straighten themselves out of the shock of Rey’s entrance) as well as the two crimson pips on her armor confirm as much. “I am Captain Artem of the Senate Guard. It is my responsibility to take the man behind you into custody.”

It is supposed to be a calming breath that Rey drags in to fill her lungs, but the air is thick and tense as though the base’s oxygen supply was swapped out for rhydonium. Her entire chest is flammable; the entire hangar feels volatile. Ready to explode. 

She just wanted peace. To feel normal, and happy. For Ben to feel the same after so long. Instead...

“I will happily step aside, Captain,” Rey promises stiffly, “when your men put their blasters away.”

“That will not be possible, Master Rey.”

Is it the words themselves that make Rey’s nose flare into something savage, or the captain’s dispassionate tone that causes its equal and opposite reaction in her? Most likely it is both: two hard surfaces striking together. Rey’s hand sparks, her fingers furling towards her lightsaber—

Her fingertips make contact. But the metal is not cold as she expected. It’s not metal at all. It’s warm, worn skin she’s touching. Ben’s fingers slip between hers, discreetly, subtly, just barely. Just enough. 

Ben’s thumb strokes the side of her wrist, down, undoing the tension, down until her hand laxes. Until just the tip of it is curled around the tip of her pinky finger. She concentrates on that small pinpoint of touch, as he does—

“Rey!” Her name, and the voice calling it, jolts her attention past the guards; Ben’s touch retreats. At first all Rey sees are the polished black dress shoes stepping forward, then the ochre military suit, all shockingly formal for the man wearing it: Poe. He approaches, his hands at his hips and a frown stamped onto his (surprisingly clean-shaven) face— much more his style. The frown deepens drastically as he comes to a stop beside Captain Artem, reaching its lowest point when his eyes lock onto Ben’s face. “Always a pleasure when you drop by.”

“Hey, Poe.” Despite the relief at seeing a familiar face, or just a face at all, Rey’s response is guarded. “Could you tell your”—she grimaces—“soldiers to stand down?”

A gruff sound comes from somewhere behind her and Ben, a pathetic excuse for backup to her argument. Rey’s head nudges to the left to find the source and there’s Chewie, sitting on top of one of their crates with his hands raised lamely in the air. He must’ve been having a fine, lazy time before the blasters got pulled out.

Rey sighs and turns her attention back to Poe, whose frown is not the only sign of displeasure now. His eyes are glinting, and that’s never good. 

“There’s no reason for the hostility,” Rey states what she thought was obvious.

“Sure ‘bout that?” Poe’s frown shrivels in on itself like he’s tasted something spoilt. “Because I’m looking right at the reason. Remember the last time someone came back from the dead? It wasn’t great. If _this_ is back”—he shoots a pointed finger and Rey’s eyes follow to the target: Ben’s forehead. Neither he nor Rey appreciate the bullseye— “who knows what that could mean! It could mean—”

“That you’re not doing a good job?” Ben suggests dryly, eying the tight security measures. “It’s likely.”

“That right there!” Poe scowls and jabs his finger forward. It’s worse than the point of the blasters. It also gets more of a reaction from Ben; his eyebrows twitch upward in… alarm? Amusement? “That,” Poe pinpoints with disgust. “More reasons for hostility.”

Whatever peace Ben managed to blanket over Rey before is long gone. The high voltage in the Force of exposed grievances and anger electrocutes her. Rey’s fingers flinch defensively for her lightsaber again. The weapon is buzzing from the agitation, and it is more than ready to be of use. Afterall: “I did not bring him here to be shot or imprisoned.”

Poe’s glower moves downward, his attention shifting to Rey and opening up quite literally with open arms— and satirically wide eyes. “Oh? Really? Then why _did_ you bring him here?”

“So we could talk?” The suggestion chirps up from behind Poe, just before Rey can ignite her saber and (justifiably) behead the New Republic’s Chief of Defense. Rose’s head pops up, like a bud, out of Poe’s right side. “Like rational human beings? That is why I called you over, remember?”

For all his huffing and puffing, Poe is quick to deflate whenever Rose butts in. As she slides over to stand in the window between him and the captain, Poe’s fingers start to curl into his palm, wilting. Eventually, his arms fall too. 

“So,” Rose beams, but her smile is spiked with thorns, “maybe put down the blasters and take this somewhere less public, Chief?”

Poe is close-lipped and glaring, waiting for Ben to give him an excuse to blast him into the next planetary system. But Ben is even quiet in the Force, leaving Rey to speculate and resist the temptation to look up at him again in the middle of this standoff. Whatever his expression, Poe doesn’t seem to know what to make of it either. His disgruntled face gives a small flinch of doubt and then he finally, begrudgingly, nods his head at Captain Artem. 

The blasters are lowered. Rey finally, fully exhales.

“Cuff him.”

Rey’s shoulders square as Captain Artem moves forward. “That’s not necessary—”

“It’s protocol,” Poe states as if he’s actually a stickler for that. Rey scowls at him.

“Fine!” She shoots out her hand, if only to keep it at arms’ length from her lightsaber. “Hand over the cuffs. I’ll do it.”

Captain Artem hesitates, stun cuffs in hand, and glances back at Poe. The chief very professionally rolls his eyes and sighs. They must know each other rather well, because the captain recognizes Poe’s white flag and runs with it. She approaches Rey and offers the stun cuffs, but not without reservation. As Rey reaches for them, Captain Artem’s bronze-plated gloves glint and retract. 

“These binders need fingerprints in order to release. Press your thumbs here and here”—she points to two black, oblong plates situated on the sides of the cuffs— “to open them. Once you do, your prints will be registered and locked in for the duration of…” The captain pauses uneasily, undoubtedly looking in Ben’s direction. Unsure what to call him, if it’s safe to call him anything. “... his detainment. A log will be reported of any time the detainee is released. That being said, he should not be released under any circumstances, unless otherwise ordered by myself or Chief Dameron. Understood?”

Despite the continued detachment in Captain Artem’s voice, and lack of visible expression, Rey knows a threat when she hears one. She prickles, and has to take a moment to pluck her needles off before replying with a clipped “understood” and grabbing the cuffs.

Rey waits until the captain withdraws, signaling for her subordinates to do the same. As they move to flank Poe, she finally relaxes enough to turn her back to them. 

Whatever curiosity she had about gouging Ben’s thoughts on the situation quickly drains from her the second her eyes lock onto him. She really should have known better.

He’s smirking.

 _Don’t_ , she warns tersely. The needles she just plucked out of herself are still in hand.

_I won’t._

Rey frowns and jabs her thumbs onto the sides of the cuffs. The print readers glow red. So do her thoughts. _You already have._

_I didn’t say anything._

_You have ‘I told you so’ stamped all over that big head of yours,_ Rey complains to him alone, and shoots him a glare. His smirk is more of a smile now and there’s a tantalizing laugh hidden under his lips. For someone about to be cuffed, he’s dead chuffed about the situation. “There’s nothing — ” Rey fumes, scowls. _There’s nothing funny about this._

Ben’s smile flutters and he nods his head to the side. “It’s a little funny.”

“Please”— the readers finally glow green and the latches release. Rey shoves the cuffs towards him— “enlighten me.”

Ben drops his wrists into the allocated slots, and they both watch as the thick metal instantly springs and snaps shut around him. Unfazed, he cranes his head down to whisper: ”after this, you’ll only have to cuff me one more time... and then we’ll be even.”

For a second, Rey gawks at Ben in absolute stressed bewilderment. But then it hits her, like a slab of duracrete to the head, and she cracks into a smile. 

_See?_

Soundlessly, he tries to stroke her smile. To coax it into reaching her eyes. Only, Rey can’t muster the strength to even meet Ben’s gaze. Her eyes are shackled to the metal around his wrists, on how severe and immense it looks. On him of all people. 

Anxiety suddenly unlatches the ground beneath her, drops her— smile, hands, security, all of her. 

It is a little funny, then, how Ben’s anxiety latches onto her just as suddenly. His fingers instantly hook, catching hers as they fall. Anchoring her to him. And his touch on her skin is a different kind of metal. It’s right out of the forge, frantically warm and bent to her shape. Contracting as a cold fear spreads. So her fingers hook and hold onto him, too. As much as he is her anchor, she’s his.

“Any time now.”

So, imagine Rey’s dismay when that mighty metal grip of Ben’s breaks. At the sound of Poe’s disgruntled comment, Ben’s hands go cold and brittle; they snap and drop away from hers. Shock turns her eyes to him, seeing that smirk he’d had before completely snuffed out. There is only a flicker of regret (she can see it: the knee-jerk reaction to beg her forgiveness) before that too is abruptly extinguished.

Rey knows well enough Ben is dropping a curtain— closing it over the real, raw display of emotion this situation has called an encore for. Like the previous puppetted humor, he puts on a little show in front of the curtain. Apathy plays this time, as Captain Artem’s guards approach to marshal him out of the hangar. But not to worry. Rey makes up for any lack of emotion on Ben’s part instantly.

As one guard flanks Ben’s left, another steps up to her—to take her place beside Ben—and her panicked expression turns feral. 

The guard decides, quite rightly, to back off.

It is in this compromise they leave the hangar: Rose whispering sense into Poe while Chewie is less… quiet about it, Captain Artem and one guard acting as an unnecessary shield between them and Ben, two guards tailing behind the group. Rey matches Ben’s and the guard on his left’s pace, remaining beside Ben as the only retreat from the box they’ve put him in. 

It is this, this claustrophobic parading cage that starts to shake Ben’s curtain. It shakes as they move past the large, overly curious audience in the hangar, and again as they march down a corridor with just as many head-turned, silent spectators— making it extremely easy for her to hear what is going on behind that curtain.

Rey keeps what she hears to herself.

Eventually, the group turns a corner and comes to a stop in front of a sizable door. The material of it sparks Rey’s curiosity; the sheen of newly installed durasteel doesn’t match the otherwise dull grey building it resides in. Rose steps up to a small computer panel at the side, presses her finger onto the designated pad, and the door breathes open. Dazed lights blink awake on the other side, revealing a slate-colored, spacious, rounded room. At the center of it is a grey, oval table headed at the opposite end by a large datacenter. Just behind it, Rey sees people—herself and the others— reflected off of dormant, black monitors. 

Finally, no more audience. The parade is over. 

The relief, though, is ridiculously brief. When Ben is led inside, the cuffs do not come off. Instead, they are immediately directed by the guard, with Ben’s hands in tow, to the middle of the table. Any confusion of Rey’s or Ben’s is answered when a magnetic _snap!_ sounds. The cuffs seal onto the hard surface, leaving Ben awkwardly bent over. Chewie makes a disgruntled sound on his behalf. Poe smiles in satisfaction.

“Comfortable?” he asks as he saunters, freely, into the room.

The irony of the moment is not lost on any of them, least of all Ben. The right side of his mouth nods upward in amusement. Rey, on the other hand, scowls.

“Honestly,” she steams, charging towards the table. She yanks a chair out from under the table, using her hands to do so, if only to keep from wrapping them around Poe’s neck… or the guard who tries to take the seat meant for Ben. 

“Take a rest, Captain Artem,” Poe says blithely, staying the captain and the other guards at the door with a wave of his hand. “I’ll comm you when this is over.”

“Forgive me, Chief Dameron, but that goes against direct orders given to me by the President. We will remain stationed outside these doors until you are ready to be escorted home. In the meantime, I will need to send a report to the Inner Council about the current situation as it… complicates matters.”

With Ben seated and the guard flattened against the wall by sheer terror of Rey, Rey takes up the role of sentinel. Standing behind Ben, she keeps watch of the situation— particularly of Poe and the captain’s exchange. Whatever pleasure Poe had taken in seeing Ben momentarily compromised is dead. Captain Artem’s rigid stance at the door makes him twitch. His neck writhes and an enormously fatigued and peeved sigh leaks out of him like air out of an overblown balloon. There is a winded history here.

“Wait if you want outside, but I’ll take responsibility for…” Poe’s grimace widens as he glances momentarily in Ben and Rey’s direction. More air leaks out of him, and he tiredly smacks his hand at them. “... _this_. I’ll report it myself.”

“Chief—”

“Captain.” 

Poe’s squirming is done with, and he stands just as firm on his decision as Captain Artem does on her side of the threshold. She is motionless... and a reticent oddity in the Force, yet it feels like Poe sees what her exact expression is under that helmet. His severity cracks, just at the corner, to give her a sheepish half-smile.

A sigh comes from under the captain’s helmet. Silently, she raises a hand and the guard hovering in the room immediately retreats to her side. 

When the door slides shut, Poe lets out what’s left in his lungs. Deflated, he approaches the table. Yet, despite the exhaustion dragging down his face, he refuses to join Chewie and Rose as they sit down. Instead, like Rey, he stands and rams a blaster glare into her head.

“There better be a _real good_ fucking explanation for this.”

The two stubborn goats stand off against one another while everyone else in the room awkwardly watches. All except Ben, whose gaze is methodically blank and trained on his hands. It is for his sake and his sake alone, Rey composes herself and tries her best to explain with a level head. 

“Chewie and I had to land on Tatooine for repairs. When I returned from selling off goods for credits, Ben was on the ship. Turns out he’d been on Tatooine for at least two years, working as a ship mechanic—”

“But it’s been three years,” Poe butts in, eyes narrowed in suspicion.

Rey’s fingers curl and jab into the corners of Ben’s chair to keep from shaking. For all Ben’s pretend, his shoulders flinch and stiffen as though she is grabbing him instead. 

“Yes, and I looked for him for a whole year and there was nothing to sense. We think—” she grimaces, the shake of her head echoing Ben’s reflex rejection that day on the ship when she said:“ _I think_ the Force was waiting for the right time to bring him back— once the dust had settled and people were starting to heal. That’s why I brought him here. Because I thought it was the right time for everyone to be together and… clear the air—”

“—dropping a bomb is the opposite of clearing the air,” Poe scoffs, “but go on—”

“—and I reasonably thought _this_ ”—she declaws from the chair to shoot an accusing finger at Ben’s manacles— “wouldn’t happen. Ben was pardoned and—”

Poe cuts her off with a flick of his hand, shaking his head dismissively. “Dead man’s pardon. Doesn’t extend to the living.”

“And why the hell not?” Chafed, Rey’s voice cracks from the strain of it all. She winces. “Honestly. Why not? He died for the cause… or are you really going to pretend that didn’t happen?”

“Well he isn’t actually dead now, is he?” Poe challenges, his hostility rising and making him look worse for wear. “And— and you know what? I’m starting to think he never kicked the bucket! You were the only one in the room with him, Rey, so who’s to say you didn’t drag him off somewhere before coming back to the base that day!”

“ _Poe!_ ” Rose’s tone means to taze him, but he doesn’t budge a single mulish muscle.

He can’t mean it. The way Poe looks at Rey, nostrils flared and the edges of his eyes red from exhaustion— he can’t mean it. She senses the day’s toll on him, feels the rough finish from where stress has ground him down. Poe’s just lashing out, throwing his sand into her eyes like a spiteful, hurt child. Spiteful, unkind, but not true. Not true to his character, and not true to hers; how can it be, when he had seen how she looked that day? 

The sting in Rey’s eyes blurs her vision, but she can clearly see _that day_. She can see that exact moment when she’d fled the graveyard of Exegol and landed on the greenery of Ajan Kloss to find Poe and Finn alive and well. Not like Ben. Not dead. Not gone. She had clung to his and Finn’s shoulders as though they were ledges, the only things keeping her from falling entirely off a cliff. They had witnessed her stare into that chasm every day for a year after Ben’s death, searching for the smallest grain of the Force bond that had sprouted and expanded there inside her. Only to find it completely rooted out. To find only herself, adrift in an unbearable void. Poe and Finn had seen her irate pain, oozing like magma and crying like the breaking of earth. She had not wanted them to, but they had seen it. Poe had seen her grief.

Rey knows Poe can still see it, past whatever sandstorm of anger is inflaming his sight. So, she blinks past her own outrage and focuses on what is true: “Ben was pardoned.”

“Dead man’s pardon. Dead,” Poe repeats like an agitated, glitching hologram before completely malfunctioning— “ _He’s alive!_ ”

There’s a long hiss. Rey’s convinced it’s coming from her— some kind of instinctive territorial terror— but then there is a very distinct, startled beep that is nothing like her. 

Standing at the open doorway are two very stunned arrivals: BB-8… and a general in a refined merigold suit. Finn.

An awkward, tense silence ensues. Ben turns his head to meet Finn’s continued, baffled look with his own rather dead gaze as he says:

“Hello. I’m alive.”

Finn short-circuits; his head twitches to the side and his mouth cracks open. “Huh,” sounds like the only thought he can compute into words. BB-8 makes up for it, though, with a surprisingly colorful yell. It snaps Rey awake at last, and she moves just as BB-8 does— each racing across the room. As BB-8 crashes into Ben’s chair in as angry a fashion one android can muster, Rey crashes into Finn with much more loving intent. She throws her arms around him, and her greeting is welcomed better than Ben’s; despite the shock, Finn instinctively returns the embrace. 

“ _This_ is what made you late?” Finn asks into her shoulder, no doubt still staring past her and attempting to process Ben’s… aliveness. Rey can hear BB-8 ramming into Ben’s chair again and again, as a part of his own… process.

“Oh, and that!” Even with Finn’s entrance, Poe doesn’t let go. If anything, BB-8’s apparent vengefulness riles him up. “There’s a big time gap between Tatooine and here— what’s that about, huh?”

For each agitating word Poe throws at her, Finn pats her back— tactfully stuffing her with calm. Even with all the new military medals poking at her chest and the strange, crisp texture of his uniform, Finn’s touch hasn’t changed much. It’s still gentle, despite everything, and reassuring. It works magic. And, for a second, Rey wonders if Finn has been practicing Jedi mind tricks behind her back. Literally. 

She squeezes Finn one last time, releasing a muffled groan into his shoulder, before letting go to face their insufferable friend again. 

“You know, I don’t like this invasive system that’s been put into place, _Chief_.” This time, she takes a turn at scolding him. Poe instantly puffs up like a cornered blowfish. Rey has clearly hit a nerve, so she happily pokes at it again. “What’s that about?”

“It’s a... compromise,” Poe grumbles, and side-steps Finn’s skepticism by crouching down to greet BB-8, who has finally released Ben (or rather Ben’s chair) from his wrath; there are singe marks on the edge of the cushion and a disgruntled undertow to Ben’s continued stoicism.

“A compromise with who?” Rey asks distractedly, dividing her attention haphazardly between her friends’ wary expressions and Ben’s entire _lack_ of expression.

“Classic politicians,” Finn huffs as he drops into the seat next to Rose, just opposite Ben. 

Still no expression, but there is a tell in the way Ben’s fingers curl inward. Retreating.

“Centrists,” Poe clarifies, though the word sounds dirty. Rey blinks and Ben’s hands are now fists, subtly clenching and unclenching like a heartbeat. Vaguely, the word that coaxed the tiniest reaction from him starts to have meaning. She’s heard it before, and it sounded dirty then too.

“Why do I feel like I should know what that means?” she asks.

“You don’t—” Poe is dumbfounded for a moment, impassioned the next, his mouth open to yell at her. But one stern shake of Finn’s head and he’s subdued; though his annoyance lingers in feeling around her, like a caf stain on the Force. “Centrists were the ones who split from the Republic. How long has it been since the treaty was signed? Two years? And already they’re stirring the pot, hounding the senate we _just formed_ for more regulation—”

“—to the point of sending multiple death threats,” Rose grumbles.

“We can’t confirm who sent the death threats,” Poe is quick to say, stamping the disclaimer into the air with his hand. Though, once it’s there, his nerves betray him and his fingers claw at an invisible neck. “But the second I find out names... I don’t get paid enough for this! We gave a little with the database, to get their votes on crucial proposals coming up _next fucking week_ — but instead of finally getting some peace around here after two years of grinding my brain to dust, I’m stuck in back-to-back meetings like some stuffed beaurocrat and playing damsel in distress over here with a bunch of guards following me day in and day out _and now with this surprise_ —“

“Sorry for not realizing the government’s in shambles—“

“Woah, woah— _WOAH!_ ” Poe’s eyes go wide and he wags a finger at Rey’s judgy scowl. “I did not say it’s in shambles—”

“Sounds like it.”

Under the (very) thick ice layer of mockery, Ben actually sounds disappointed.

“Hey, supreme pain in my ass? Shut it!” Poe snaps, forward, and now that weapon of a finger is stabbing into Ben’s personal space bubble. It finally jolts an actual expression out of the sarcastic statue. In absolute revulsion, Ben lurches back from the intruding appendix before it can jab into his prominent cheekbone. The shock is enough to wake more motion, and Ben’s gaze moves up from Poe’s finger to his fuming face. The sight apparently fascinates him; the sight of Ben’s enjoyment has the complete opposite effect on Poe. Burning infernally, his pointed finger curls in on itself. “I swear: I’ll get those bodyguards to drop you in the nearest trash compac—”

Rey yanks the rest of that sentence, and Poe, to the opposite end of the room with a stiffly polite, completely rhetorical: “can I talk to you for a second?”

“Hey!” Poe exclaims as he staggers and bumps into the datacenter. Behind him, the blank monitors make for a lovely mirror reflecting not only Rey’s fury, but also her hand as it smacks into Poe’s arm. “ _HEY!_ ”

“What the _hell_ is wrong with you _?_ ” she hisses.

“I could ask you the same!” Poe shoots back, wide-eyed and rubbing what promises to be a glorious bruise. 

“I understand that I came at a terrible time—”

“Oh, _come on_ , it’s more than that and you know it! The political bullshit is one thing but… but that—“ Rey flinches as Poe’s infamous finger shoots back, again, at Ben. This time, his aim isn’t so steady. Poe’s emotions pound into her like waves into a dam. “That man tortured me, Rey. And newsflash! Kylo Ren doesn’t have that great a reputation with anyone else.”

“I know, Poe. I understand.” Rey’s frown wears down the sharp edges of frustration, sobering her. She follows Poe’s animosity to the source, to the figure he sees sitting at the table across from his friends. It is a masked darkness he sees, a surface that reflects pain and fear. Rey is familiar with that sight, “but that man over there… his name is Ben Solo. He came here to make things right. He’s—” Rey stops short of the word ‘different’. It feels wrong. 

The man under the mask is not different; the mask is just gone. Or rather, it is a bandage continuously unfolding— layer by layer, moment by moment. Head lowered still to the table, Ben peeks out from under the gauze, eyes momentarily landing on Finn. His jaw, clenched, relaxes just enough for his lips to part— to speak. With Finn. Rey’s frown softens. “He’s mending.”

“Yeah, sure.” Poe isn’t seeing. He’s rolling his eyes. “He’s the spitting image of reform.”

“Poe, please.” 

“You care about him _that much_ , huh—”

“I love him.” The correction is swift and natural, a breeze of fresh air moving through her, through the sweltering tension around them. “But it’s more than that and you know it. _He’s Leia’s son._ When it came time, he fought for her and he fought for me. He saved my life at the cost of his own because he _honestly_ thought the galaxy would be better off for it. So _do not belittle_ that sacrifice! Don’t.”— her voice quivers, she breathes to steady it— “Don’t you dare.”

There’s a shift then, precarious and heated, like tectonic plates moving under their feet, sliding and changing the landscape. Poe’s not as firm as before, knocked off balance by the mention of Leia, by the trembling nature of Rey’s warning, and by his own better nature rising to the surface. She can feel Poe’s anger sinking, giving rise to compassion… but on exposure to the current climate, the feeling hardens. Poe frowns, long aged lines carving out a disillusioned reality she refuses to face.

“... Even if he has changed, Rey, that doesn’t mean everyone else has to change how they see him. Or that they can.”

“But isn’t it worth trying?”

Rey taps at the hard surface, knowing full well it hasn’t set completely to stone. There’s another shift, an uncomfortable one. Poe takes a deep, pensive breath, his frown wavering. A wave of uncertainty encourages Rey to press on—

“He has a point.”

The voice is registered immediately, but the words… mutual confoundment turns both Rey and Poe’s heads quite slowly towards the source. They stare at Ben who, unfazed, stares right back. For once, they are in theatrical agreement on what to say to him: “ _what?_ ”

“Dead as the name is, if I’m alive so is Kylo Ren. No one is obligated to change that perception.”

Rey’s confusion shrivels into something more foul, and she glares at Ben’s sedate expression; it irks her more than that damned name ever has.

“I never took you for a defeatist.”

“I hope that’s sarcasm,” Ben immediately rebuts. His eyebrows instinctively pinch and crest together as if to laugh. It’s the most emotion he’s offered her since entering the room; it’s not nearly enough. Though, to Ben’s credit, the moment he senses Rey’s anger shift weight onto him, the outline of an earnest frown starts to take shape. 

_I’m only stating facts, Rey._

“Not really.” 

Rey’s clipped, resentful tone is as good as a slap across Ben’s face. The hit confuses him, as does her rigidity as she follows Poe back to the table. Somewhat reluctantly, she sits down beside Ben, the pair of them looking like two chastised children. Even their frowns match now: chagrined and obtuse. In a way, Rey’s petulance over the ordeal makes up for Ben’s pretend placidity. Or at least, that is what she uses to justify her ill humor.

“So,” she huffs, bracing her arms across her chest to, believe it or not, calm herself as she asks: “what happens now?”

Thankfully, unlike Rey, Poe’s catharsis is nearly complete. He sits slack in his seat next to Finn, hand to his mouth, and swivels from side to side like a pensive human pendulum. For one, two, three… six swivels, he surveys Ben and thinks, his index finger and thumb pulsating and squishing his lips together as he does so. As the silence in the room is filled only with the sound of his swiveling, squeaking chair. 

The thought of Force lightning flirts across Rey’s mind—

“I don’t know,” Poe sighs. He gives his mouth another squish for good measure, stamping his lips into a permanent state of consternation, before leaning forward. He slinks his arms onto the table and squeezes his hands together. When he finally opens up to offer an explanation, his tone doesn’t promise much hope. 

“The past few years have been a rocky trip, nothing too surprising, but now with elections coming up for the first time since we revived the Senate… things have been shifting. A lot. It’s obvious now the database was a test. We flunked and now Centrists think we’re a bunch of sweating choobies. They’re swinging at us now, for the very council chairs that _just so happen_ to be getting death threats. Pretty sure it’s a bluff, shaking the tree to see which resignations or votes will fall their way next week. As long as no one blinks and the votes stay in our favor, they’ll back off and we’ll have time to root out the cocky fuckers wasting our time. But add this in… it could destabilize everything.”

“Then we keep this a secret.” 

Keep Ben a secret, Rey means to beg— to bargain, all the while bewildered at having to do so in the first place. The child in her wants to scream: _this isn’t fair! This is mine. Why can’t this be mine?_ To be punished for doing the right thing, for sharing what she loves, is too ridiculous and cruel to tolerate either in a child’s heart or an adult mind. She regrets not feeding that desperate girl in her who throws her thoughts and feelings at the walls now, who had only ever wanted to claim Ben as her own, as a secret treasure no one else was allowed to see. The enraged girl hits Rey in the back of her eyes, making them sting, breaking her mouth open for the girl to say: “I’ll hide him away.”

“After that show in the hangar?” The gust from Poe’s laugh propels him back onto his chair. He rubs at his forehead, nursing a migraine. “Sure, why not? Not a peep will make it down the galactic grapevine.”

“We _could_ try to contain it.” Finn is more helpful in his input, but the wary grimace does not bode well. He takes so deep a breath, the clothed buttons on his fine suit threaten to burst. “ _But_ ,” he depresses, “if the secret ever got out that the Chief of Defense hid the resurrected Supreme Leader of the First Order…”

“There goes trust in the Republic,” Rose concludes grimly.

“And votes,” Poe grumbles on the other side of Finn, offering yet another dismal outcome to sit on their shoulders. Chewie, ever the supportive Wookie, adds another weight to tip (or, rather, break) the scale. Poe’s fingers dig into his own eyes. “Thanks, Chewie, yeah. That too. Can’t wait to be unemployed.” The Chief of Defense, in all his costumed glory, sinks and sulks in his chair. He groans from beneath his hands. “...I have to inform the council.”

During the brief, failed, deliberation over Rey’s inept suggestion, Ben remained silent. Her eyes had dashed over to him again and again, waiting for anything— a blinkcode of emotion to comfort or validate her own fluctuating feelings. Her attention lingers on him now, on the faintest strain in his neck muscles. It is the only signal he gives, unconsciously and unwillingly. And she feels like she’s choking.

“So?” Rey tears away from the feeling, and her insides twist in retaliation. “If you do that— inform the council— what happens then?”

Her unease is much easier to detect than Ben’s. Poe drops his hands, straightens, and regards her. 

“They’ll deliberate,” he heedfully answers. “They’ll be obligated to consider the existing pardon, but since that was given by the coalition, and with this cycle being an election year…” Poe shakes his head, despondent. And there’s another blink in the code: Ben’s jaw, bracing for the inevitable. “They’ll see him as a threat: a poster boy for the extreme Centrists and hidden war criminals. An execution will be on the table. Caluan is the Chair of Security and he will definitely bring it up, even if I ask him not to. Larma— _President_ D’Acy… I don’t think she’ll approve but, if enough of the council votes for it... and The Minister of Justice _will_ second it; she’s been nipping for something like this, a way to set a public example—”

“— but do you really think she’d go that far?” Finn asks, yet his optimistic incredulity doesn’t reach Rey’s ears. She listens to, and watches, Ben’s unwilling code— the small indications of fear that rise like a pulse: his Adam’s apple bobs, his muscles tighten, putting every bone and tendon into stark definition as though purposefully exposing his neck for— “an execution? Really?”

The pulse flatlines. Ben closes his eyes; Rey’s ears ring painfully from the silence, even as the others continue talking politics instead of fate.

Poe is shrugging. “Nothing shuts up opposition like an exe—”

“ _Pfassssssk_ ,” Rey hisses, her head whipping back to Poe and effectively slapping the word from his mouth. Her skin is wildly heated and dangerously dry, warning signs of an approaching monsoon. “If I hear that _fucking word_ one more time, I will _actually_ drag Ben off somewhere, to the farthest end of the galaxy if necessary, but I won’t be coming back— _I swear_ —“

Poe, aghast, offers his hands in surrender. “Rey, listen, I’m sorry I said that earlier, I didn’t mean it—” He freezes mid-apology, his sincere gaze drifting off to the wall behind Rey. Suddenly, his right hand _pings!_ upward. “But that is an idea.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re excused,” Poe mumbles back, still staring— now squinting— at the wall. His manners are clearly elsewhere, as is his brain.

Before Rey can lurch forward and commit treason, Finn skillfully intercepts. 

“What he _means_ to say is exile is an option. Outer Rim, maybe in the Sluis sector? It’s guaranteed Republic territory, and there’s plenty of uninhabited spots out there.” Finn proposes the idea with enthusiasm, smiling and searching out Rey’s approval. She’s eerily quiet and, even though she meets his eye, the look is heavy. Under the weight of it, he frowns. “... I guess the council will want him to be in complete solitude but… I mean, we’d probably have to run security checks every now and then. Rey could take that responsibility, right, Poe?”

“Mmm…” Poe’s face scrunches up and his head wavers nauseatingly from side to side. 

“No.” Rey is stiff-lipped, to keep the sick from spilling out her mouth. “Exile is not an option.”

_That’s not for you to decide, Rey._

Ben’s unnecessary reminder is delicately quiet; it is the most abrasive sound Rey’s ever heard. The resignation in it stirs the sick in her stomach to action, rising in her throat and burning there. Burning an anger so painful, Rey winces. She would have rather Ben shouted, knowing just how thunderous a sound it would be. If he wished it, his voice could reach the farthest ends of the galaxy and command every star to fall in line at his feet. Cruel then, how a whisper from him can make her crumble.

“If you won’t fight for yourself”— Rey turns to Ben as her defenses fall, her panic and pain a battlecry— “can you at least fight for me?”

It’s an unexpected attack, one that breaks Ben’s focus on retreat. He finally looks at her, with that same ambushed confusion as before, as though shot by friendly fire. Like there’s been a miscommunication between allies on the battlefield— as though he had already been fighting for her in his own way. 

She doesn’t understand his strategy at all. It’s infuriating.

Rey seethes, and Ben studies, in frenzied stillness. It is extremely awkward for the unwilling witnesses in the room.

“... Ehh,” Poe groans. His discomfort shudders through the quiet and successfully, entirely disrupts it. He wags a flippant hand through the air. “You know what? I don’t like the image of him on a farm somewhere, communing with nature or whatever while I’m here cleaning up this mess, anyway. I need there to be sweat. More… what’s that word? _Toil_.” 

Their inscrutable feud in a deadlock, both Rey and Ben’s attention attempts to shift back onto Poe. They turn right into Poe’s finger, pointed and plotting insidiously against Ben’s forehead.

“I want you to toil,” Poe says slowly, nodding and grinning to himself. “What about…” He swings his arm through the air, and snaps his fingers at everyone at the table. “Kriff, what’s that word for when you work but don’t get paid?” 

Poe’s point absentmindedly lands on Chewie as he thinks. So, the Wookie gives a rather… tepid answer.

“ _Gak!_ ” Poe’s entire body retracts. “No! Not that one!”

So, Chewie offers another, slightly less apprehensive option.

“That one.” Poe beams.

Rey is beaming, too. Lasers, to be exact. “ _Indentured servitude_?” 

“Hey- just hear me out!” Poe flails at the multiple incredulous looks he’s getting. “It’s nothing like what you— you know”— he winces at Rey’s raised eyebrows, which dare him to continue gallivanting around her, and Finn’s, relationship with the current topic— “It’d be different! He’d be obligated to serve the Republic for a few years as reparations, okay? We need knowledge about possible threats, and he’s got the inside scoop. So, I don’t know, maybe he’d be an advisor of sorts in my sector. Agitators would get off my back, if they knew there was no Supreme anything to rally behind.”

“That’s a terrible idea.” 

Ben’s patronizing, and borderline humored, tone does wonders to change Poe’s mood. In an instant, the man’s countenance goes from inspired to incensed.

“My patience should be documented,” Poe mutters. “Rose, are you jotting this down?”

“No…” Rose eyeballs Poe, who is too enthralled with glaring at Ben to even take notice of her annoyance. “I’m an engineer. Not your secretary.”

When Poe’s focus snaps away to Rose, sloppily apologizing with a “you know that’s not what I meant, right?”, Rey takes matters into her own hands. Or rather feet.

She stomps on Ben’s toes. Force, how she wishes she could take delight in the comical, aftershocked bulge of his eyes. Or the way his bottom lip audibly plops on an otherwise inaudible: _Ow._ But she can’t. Not even when Ben aims his wide-eyed, pitiful gaze at her.

This time, though, his confusion doesn’t last too long. Rey’s disappointment is far too palpable to be misconstrued. It sinks into his gaze and drags it, down to her white-knuckled fists and bowing down deeper into her quickened pulse. He listens past the noise of the others’ banter and Rey’s tired defenses, and discerns her blinkcode within seconds. He seems to read her hands, his eyes skimming over her skin as he takes a deep, reluctant breath.

“I… appreciate your intent,” Ben says, each word gruff from disuse. Head still bowed to Rey, his expression writhes from a tangle of emotions; his hands knead together. Despite being caught in an uncomfortable knot, Ben turns to the person he’s addressing: Poe. The Chief of Defense, disarmed by Ben’s newfound manners, nurses a tied tongue and slack jaw. 

“The problem is… you’ll cut off the head, only to sprout more,” Ben explains, struggling to untie the right words. His face is severe, drawn as a military map. From where Rey sits, she witnesses his stark profile harden… and shift unexpectedly like a war-torn border. “One head will believe I’m pretending, biding my time to tip the scales in their favor, or to seize power for myself once I know I have support. And the other heads will be your new political enemies, who think you’re a First Order sympathizer.”— having calculated all future moves on the grid, Ben shrugs his eyes to the ceiling in disappointment of the obvious, unfortunate nature of their opponents— “After all, you’re already conceding to Centrists. And now, with the ex-Supreme Leader as your advisor...?” 

The knot tightens inside Ben. He swallows, and the receding lines on his throat resemble a loss of ground. A tactical surrender. 

“The closer I am to the Republic, the more at risk it becomes. The logical solution is execution. The humane one is exile. Whichever one it is, it should be done quickly or else it risks too much public and political scrutiny.” 

Rey had never been one for strategy, so perhaps that’s why it takes her until this very moment to see the full scale of Ben’s moves; she had spent too much time looking at each individual grid— not seeing the pattern, the shift, the pull-back. He had known from the moment they’d landed on Corellia that this was a losing battle. One he planned to lose, so they could win before a war ever started. Only, she refused to leave the field. And for that, she now stands alone in nomansland, shot through and unable to breathe.

A harsh sound, metal clawing against metal, yanks Rey’s focus back to the table— to the strangely blurry sight of Ben’s hands, fisted and frozen where they tried to pull free. The manacles look far too soft for something so angry and loud. She blinks and they’re back to being cruel, and her cheeks are wet. She’s crying. And Ben, for all his surrender, had tried to reach her. To stop what he’d foolishly started.

She knows what she’ll see if she looks at him. So Rey hurriedly wipes at her eyes and levels her sight on the edge of the table.

It’s the first time since Ajan Kloss that anyone else in the room has seen Rey cry. She can feel them flounder, knowing they should ease her distress but unsure how. The only one with real practice comforting her when she’s like this… can’t.

So Finn tries, and tip-toes in. “I want to believe the Republic is better than that. It has to be, or what was it all for?” Rather than address Rey directly, he averts his eyes from her and instead looks to Ben for help. “What if you didn’t serve politically?”

“Military?” Rose jumps in, anxious to do her part. “You could be in Finn’s division. Until the database is really up and running, it’d be useful to have someone from the… previous government help track down First Order fugitives, and help with human trafficking rumors— especially around Sibensko.”

“Coup,” Rey murmurs on Ben’s behalf, the consequence coming so quick to mind now that she sees the same landscape as Ben. Not wanting to think of impossibles anymore, or to be treated like some wounded wild animal, she steers the conversation elsewhere. “So, is that what the database is really about?”

“Yeah,” Poe answers, as if in slow motion. He’s not sure how to move around her like this. So, she straightens in her chair and meets his eye. Challenging him to treat her any differently than usual. He takes the hint. “We only agreed to it if it meant starting with ship movements, the hope being to stop it there. I have some… serious suspicions about where this database would be heading if Rose wasn’t in charge of it.”

“Is there any way we can change my name on there?”

“What for?”

“Well,” Rey sighs, “I didn’t exactly know I was being registered permanently and I gave a last name.”

“Ah, yeah, Rose told me. So what? You’re Rey Skywalker.” Poe shrugs the case closed. “It’s fine.”

“No it’s not,” Rey whips back. “I gave that last name because I was forced to. I want to take it off the record.”

“You can’t.” Poe makes a face, like she’s demanded he delete a planet. “You need a last name.”

“I was doing fine without one for 23 years.”

He scoffs. “Well, not anymore—”

“Then put down Palpatine! Rey Palpatine! Put _that_ in your database.”

Now everyone looks at her, like she herself has blown up an entire planetary system with the sheer volume of her voice— and that name. That excruciatingly loud name. Poe sounds small in comparison when he feebly replies with... “what?”

“You said I need a last name?—”

“Rey—”

“— No, Ben!” Frustrated and ferocious, she jabs _her_ finger this time, into the table. “That’s _mine_ .”— Rey stakes her finger again, claiming the pathetic sliver of land she can— “That’s it.”— she flings that stake, and a matching pointed stare, at Poe— “So, have fun taking that into _political consideration_.”

Poe drops his head, in the direction of Rey’s flung ancestry. He nods. Silently. Hollowly. Rey’s certain she’s broken him.

She should feel bad. She is vaguely aware of an additional grain of regret, dropped atop the rest, but with the scale already tipped completely over… the sentiment doesn’t matter.

“If you want to be Rey, just Rey,” Rose beacons to her from across the table. She stands up from her seat, and the scale nudges in the other direction. Faintly. “I can do that. Right now, really. I need your fingerprint, anyway.“

Rose’s focus flickers away from Rey to Poe, expecting some kind of push-back but receiving none. The man just shakes his head and dissolves onto the table. So she grabs her datapad, nods her head at Rey, and leaves Finn to deal with the pool of Poe. Hesitantly, Rey follows suit.

“There’s two of them,” she hears Poe bubble into the table. “Two, Finn.”

“I know,” Finn says. Like clockwork, he starts patting Poe’s back. “I know.” 

Rey’s eyes stay glued on the rhythmic patting motion, as Rose fiddles with the datacenter and the monitors awaken; even as Rose grabs her hand and guides her thumb, like she would a child, onto a green-lit box on her datapad. The comforting, affectionate circles Finn rubs into Poe’s back turns a troublesome cog in Rey’s head. Until her head is fully turned in Ben’s direction.

He’s staring at her, having never looked away since she cried. His hands are still fisted, every muscle in his body taut and terrified. Her vulnerability has stripped him, and she can see that thin tightrope of emotion between them. She feels the tense suspension: the desperation to reach her; the desperation to not hurt her; the helplessness of being unable to do either.

“It’s done!” Rose trills; Ben looks away. “And all yours.” 

“Is that so?” Rey murmurs, dropping her gaze down to Rose’s datapad in time to see the bright blue _SECURED_ alert vanish. She removes her thumb and the dark screen lights up again. This time, with words such as: _Spaceport Registry, Mos Eisley, NREA Corellia, Spacecraft Registry, YT 492727ZED_ _,_ _Millennium Falcon, Residence, Unknown, Rey Skywalker_. 

“Only your fingerprint can access this information… and me,” Rose explains before switching from the small screen to an identical, albeit larger projection on the datacenter. Rote memory moves her fingers through different security checks, allowing Rose to keep her focus where it’s truly needed. 

“So, the name change,” she says without missing a single protocol on screen, “how long did you know?”

With one final swipe, the profile returns and all those little blue words reveal themselves. _Rey Skywalker_ stares back at Rey... 

_“Rey Palpatine!”_

She had really said that. Out loud. Out of rage and fear, and exhaustion from pretending for “three years.” Rey sighs.

“Ah.” Rose selects _Rey Skywalker._ The little box holding that identity captive opens up.

“I didn’t say anything because I was ashamed,” Rey admits. “And well… it doesn’t belong to me, or my parents. I don’t know the names they took but I know they gave me Rey. That’s the only name I’ve ever known, and it’s mine. I don’t have anything else.”

The name _Skywalker_ is highlighted, but Rose’s finger hesitates and hovers over it. She frowns at it, and turns to Rey.

“You have me,” Rose says, with the same confidence and reflex she has in unlocking and keeping the most secure Republic secrets. “You have us. _Every single one of us_ in this room.” 

Rose’s warmth colors Rey’s skin. 

“Besides,”— Rose turns back to _Skywalker_ with a shrug— “last names are overrated.”

Having selected the name _,_ new commands pop up. Rose’s fingers flutter across the screen; Rey’s nerves move just as rapidly.

“Really?” she asks. “It doesn’t… feel like a connection to your sister?”

Rose’s rote motions slow. “... Well, it does,” she admits, her work halting completely. She trades the hollow act of reaching at thin air for touching something real: the crescent pendant on her chest. With a gentle press, Rose’s entire chest fills and her heart overflows into a wistful smile. “But there are other things that connect family.”

On the screen, beneath the noise of commands, Rey spots the _Millennium Falcon_ and looks inside to understand what those things are for her: the silver case of Leia’s pins in the galley of her quarters, the compartment down the corridor where two lightsabers wait, and around the corner… Han’s pair of dice in the cockpit, Chewie’s hair on Ben’s sweater.

Every one of those things is a part of home for Rey. A part of her family. Only... 

“I don’t have anything like that for my parents,” she says and drops her head in dismay. But then, the green color of her tunic begins to smell of dew and hope. Rey remembers the dream, and the promise she and Ben had made.

“But you might?” Rose prods, insightful as ever. Rey’s smile is fleeting, but soft. She nods.

“Good,” Rose cheers. Ensured, she turns back to the screen. _Skywalker_ disappears. “You are officially just Rey!” 

Just Rey stares at her name in that blue box, at the three holographic letters defining who she is. If she wanted to, she could poke her finger right through the name, make it scatter like dust particles in the air and disappear. Yet, somehow, it carries so much weight. But it’s her weight. Just hers.

Rose chuckles quietly. When Rey glances over, her friend is also staring at the screen. But with a much more lighthearted expression, and with a smile of someone who's been told a clever joke. Spotting Rey’s confusion, she lets her in on the laugh. “It’s funny, you know, because ‘Just Rey’”— Rose’s eyebrows perk up, her smile persistent— “it’s almost like ‘Solo’.” 

“Ah,” Rey responds. She tries to chuckle, too; a measly puff of air through the nose. It blows down Rose’s smile and reveals the bare bones of a more honest, awkward grimace.

Rose sighs, channeling Rey’s exasperation and glancing over at the source. Leant forward and tight-lipped, Ben is too engrossed in debate to notice the new pair of eyes set on him. Even when Rey braves a look, he doesn’t perceive her.

“It’s always a bummer when the honeymoon is over,” Rose quietly laments.

“Honeymoon?” Rey asks absentmindedly. The word strays from her as she watches those tight lips of Ben’s protrude like fists to fight something Poe’s said. 

“You know…” Rose’s whisper trails suggestively, her wry grin in Rey’s periphery. The severity of Ben’s arched brow cracks that familiar ravine above his nose, and Rey ponders how long it’ll take for that tension to relax without her kiss. “ …. you do know, right?”

It’s Rey’s turn to look confused and offended. She finally wanders back to Rose, eyebrows scrunched. “No, I don’t think I do.”

“Have you two not had… you know”— Rose leans in, eyes terrifyingly curious, and whispers: “ _sex?_ ”

“ _Rose!_ ” Rey whispers back, gaping like a boiling frog. “ _No!_ ”

Rose’s shocked expression puts Rey’s to shame. “Not even once? Not even a little, I don’t know, Force foreplay?” Her eyes veer back to Ben. “ _Really?_ ”

Rey blushes on Ben’s behalf, and her own. Her skin and eyes burn as though she’s standing in the desert at midday, staring directly at the sun. In a way, she has been. How is it possible to love and want something that makes her burn and thirst? Flustered and foolish, she covers her face with her hands and groans.

“At this rate,” she says, fatigued, “I don’t think we ever will.”

“Maybe he’s a virgin.”

Rey nearly combusts. “Rose!”

“What’s the big hoopla!” Rose wags her datapad at Rey to chastise... or to fan her; either works. Despite claiming it isn’t a big deal, she continues their conversation in a hushed manner. “It’s not taboo! Everyone starts out as one. Finn and I were _definitely_ virgins”— Rose rolls her eyes up to the heavens with a wince— “and even Poe popped out as one, though”— her eyes roll back down, exasperated— “like with everything else, he pretends he was born with predestined knowledge.”

“He’s not.” Cooling down, Rey shakes her head to make space for logic. “A virgin, that is. He can’t be.”

Rose snorts at her. “Why not? Aren’t you?”

Indignant, Rey snorts right back. “Of course I am! It wasn’t on the top of my priorities and I hadn’t found the right—” her pursed lips slack off— “Oh.”— her entire expression slacks— “ _Oh_.”

Victorious, Rose beams and nods, encouraging Rey’s slow realization with a sweetly sincere “there you go.” 

The speculation of Ben possibly being just as sexually inept as her is like seeing a mirage in that dreadful desert of hers. In one blink, it is an absolute, ridiculous and overwhelming relief— in the next: an absolute, ridiculous and maddening nightmare. 

Rey despairs. “Is _that_ why he’s trying to exile himself to the farthest end of the galaxy?”

Just as flummoxed, Rose shakes her head and shrugs. “Love makes people dumb.”

There’s just enough melancholy in her tone to make Rey question: “Finn?”

“Pfft.” Rose pokes at the datacenter, switching it off. Her head absently bobs from side to side. “Finn. Me. Vash.”

“Who the kriff’s Vash?”

“My new partner!” Rose exclaims and stares at Rey, whose expression is as blank as the disconnected monitors. Her friend waits for something to ping into place, but eventually gives up and explains: “... Rey, Finn and I broke up. Months ago.”

“Oh…” Rey is still buffering, like a computer that’s been in disrepair for years. After all, her relationships, and communication skills, have in fact been in a state of utter inactivity. She’d been operating on safe mode since the war, going through the motions but never retaining the information or emotions of those around her— least of all, her friends. Realizing all this, she starts to crash. “Oh, Rose, I-”

“It’s okay!” Rose is quick to respond, waving a hand to stop Rey from apologizing (for the break-up, for the breakdown of their friendship). She smiles reassuringly. “It was mutual. Mostly. It was like… an adrenaline thing, you know? During the war, everything was so loud and so much. So, I was quick to grab onto something— _someone_ who felt good. We both loved that feeling, and we loved the little moments of quiet we got together. But… after the war, things weren’t as loud. The quiet was... too quiet? The love was more for the feeling, and not so much for each other. Don’t get me wrong— I do love Finn! I always will. Just… not the way I thought. And he felt the same. We both want different things. People.”

Rey’s eyes stray back to Finn’s hand, still on Poe’s back. Resting there. A sense of home flourishes from that one spot of contact— spreading like slow-growing vines.

“Poe?”

“No!” Rose guffaws to Rey’s utter confusion. “Vash! Oh, wait”— in a blink, Rose refocuses and Rey’s question clicks into place— “for Finn? Yeah,” she nods, the motion weightless and obvious, “yup. It’s really just a matter of time. For them. And for me, too. I mean… I am actually dating the person I like. It’s just… it’s not totally how a relationship is supposed to be. It’s long distance. And complicated. Nobody believes I’m really in a relationship because of that, but I am. I absolutely am. …That makes me sound like I’m not, doesn’t it?”

Rey winces. “... A little.”

“It’s not my fault,” Rose grumbles, pouting and dipping her head. She rummages through the belt bag around her waist. “Poe works me like a Blurrg, and zhe is busy too…” Even as Rose’s complaints dwindle into a quiet monologue pointed at the contents of her bag, Rey can hear the general message of worked-up frustration. It’s as awkward and nervous as sweat, and all too familiar a feeling. Rey’s thoughts drift back to Ben, and her eyes follow, and she wonders: if they continue on like this, would anyone believe _their_ relationship? Would it even be a relationship?

Suddenly, contact disrupts her worries. Rey’s wrist is grabbed, by a seriously determined hand. She glances down in time to witness Rose promptly turn her hand palm-up, to drop a little glass bottle full of green bulbs. Though Rose is grinning, quite mischievously, Rey is at a loss as to why. That is, until Rose vaguely clarifies: “if you take one now, it’ll be effective tonight.” 

Quiet as the exchange is, Rey’s sure her expression is telling enough to give it all away. Yet, despite the flustered heat in her cheeks and ears, Rey manages to uncork the bottle just fine. Optimism, or maybe naivety, tips the bottle over to drop a bulb onto her hand. Rose’s optimism, though, is way ahead of Rey’s. 

“Take the whole bottle,” she encourages Rey’s hope.. and blush. “Though I _am_ in a relationship, I don’t need them anymore. I’m hoping you will.”

“Yeah,” Rey sighs. “Me too.”

With the bottle corked and discreetly shoved into a pocket, Rose decides her job here is done and turns to head back to the boys. Nervously, Rey swallows down the bulb, her embarrassment, and grabs Rose’s arm. It takes Rose’s look of confusion for Rey to finally, clumsily work out the words: “could you tell me... how it’s supposed to be?”

Rose blinks. “Sex?”

Her friend’s sincerity makes Rey fidget. Asking for advice makes her uncoordinated, and far too aware of her own shortcomings. Still, she manages to admit, albeit sheepishly: “well, that too, but also… a relationship?”

Rose’s expression melts like butter, gently and sweetly amused— and Rey thinks it’s what a sister is supposed to look like. 

Somehow, despite the lengths Rose goes to in helping Rey, when they walk back to the table the others are still in the throes of a debate. A debate that goes from hushed to absolutely silent as Rey approaches her seat. Chewie, Finn, Poe, and even Ben are looking at her. 

Jokingly, she speculates. “Were you talking about me?” 

“Yes,” Ben says over a choir of “no.”

There’s an awkward silence, in which Ben side-eyes Finn and Poe. His head slowly turns to stare down the two liars, who stare right back at his honesty with outrage.

“... Ah,” is all Rey can say as she stiffly nods and sits down.

It takes Rose flicking at Finn’s arm for him to reluctantly fess up. “We were talking about the political ramifications of your… lineage, if it ever came out.” His eyes flit to Ben. “Like it did with Leia.”

Rey scoffs. “Leia was running for First Senator. I’m not. By a long shot.”

“No,” Poe slides in, miffed, “but you’re the friend of someone who’s job is _already_ on the line. Political opponents will spread rumors high and low of you two doing who-knows-what—”

“That is absolutely _none_ of their business,” Rey steams, immediately flushed with every _who-knows-what_ Rose enlightened her about—

There’s a flutter in the Force. Strained. Self-conscious. Ben. She glances over at him and notices he’s gained a little more color to his cheeks. And that his eyes are involuntarily locked onto her. He clears his throat.

“That’s not what he meant,” Ben clarifies.

“Ah” is Rey’s new favorite word. She shrinks into her seat, away from the flurry of awkward, amused, and horrified feelings in the air.

Bug-eyed, Poe takes a moment to recalibrate, and then tries to re-rail the conversation. 

“Can you think of anyone else who might know about this?” he asks, tactfully avoiding the name of ‘this’.

The question is a cold splash of water. Rey immediately cools, to the point of freezing. Her mind stills on the other aspect of hers and Rose’s conversation. “About my… family?” Poe nods, and Rey glances down at her hands. They’re curled, fingers grasping at the seam of her green tunic as they would grass— or straws. “Anyone who knows is either here or dead.”

The distracted noise of emotion in the Force goes still. Instead, a ubiquitous grave feeling fills the room, as though the dead have entered. Their names sit at the table, staring at Rey: Leia, Luke, her parents… and the name that had destroyed everything. Rey can sense him, sneering and rejoicing in her fear. In her fear that dead names would send Ben away from her, as they had sent her away from her parents. Her fear that her happiness— her _home_ would be destroyed again.

“I want to build.”

Ben is the one to break the silence, crushing it and the thought of that name to dust. 

“What?” Rey isn’t the only one asking. It seems everyone at the table is confused. Except for Ben. He stares at Rey with absolute resolve… and smiles. It is a small and brief blinkcode, comforting her.

“There’s still damage from the war,” he explains, casually turning to a dazed Poe. “From the war before that, too. There doesn’t seem to be a formal reconstruction plan, at least not in the Outer Rim. Consider it… community service.” Ben pauses, the relaxed nature of his speech faltering as he frowns. The regret he was running from before, and sitting in now, manifests itself in words. “I want to fix what I broke.”

Ben looks to Rey again, for validation. For a moment, he receives nothing. An avalanche of shock wipes her face clean, blank. Then she breaks through, a rupture of relief transforming every part of her: her hands, her shoulders, her tearful smile. 

“That’s a great idea,” Rose voices when Rey can’t find hers. Other voices chime in, too, discussing the viability of Ben’s plan; his plan, which doesn’t involve exile or death, or indefinitely leaving her. It takes a few comments for Ben to tear away from her smile, to forgo her joy in exchange for more, practical conversation. And the joy she feels is speechless and untold, but it is not the only feeling rendering her tongue-tied. 

As the others tackle next steps, Rey lingers behind and sits quiet. From afar, she hears them sprint towards a plan: for Ben to be contained in a senate guest chamber, for Poe to convene a meeting with the Inner Council, and for a hearing to be held tomorrow. She hears the hope of it, but that feeling sitting alongside her joy...

Even as Rey stands up with the others, to leave and begin setting the plan in motion, that feeling tags along. She’s the one playing pretend now, giving hollow nods and smiles, and only mustering enough vigor to glare at the guards as they come to take their places around Ben again. The only things quieter than her are the halls and hangar they walk through; vacated at the late hour. With ease, all but Chewie slip into the Senate Guards’ airspeeder to head to their respective ‘homes’ for the night. Like Chewie, Rey wishes she could bunker down in the Falcon. But she moves as though tethered to Ben by a short string. And she feels Ben beside her the entire time, feels him peer at her with both his eyes and the Force. But he keeps just as silent. 

It’s only as they’re walking down an empty hall in the Senate Dome— just her, Ben, and the guards— that she realizes what the feeling is looming dark as the night shadows on the red walls and carpeted floor.

Fear.

She fumbles with it as the small group comes to a stop in front of yet another door, the final door of the evening. This one doesn’t require a fingerprint, though. Captain Artem mutely puts in the code, and opens the vacant guest chamber. It’s a generously sized and decorated room; strangely, it reminds her of Takodana, with various warm greens coloring the room and a wooden partition separating the lounging area from the bed and bathroom further in. If not for the circumstances, Rey would feel quite at home here. She almost does, until guards fill into the room to screen it and to close all the curtains. Captain Artem escorts Ben into the room, and suddenly it doesn’t look so generously sized. He makes it look ten times smaller. And the gleam of his cuffs make it look like a cell.

“Guards will be stationed at both ends of this hall until the time of the hearing,” Captain Artem discloses as she approaches Rey, who stands hesitant at the doorway.

The other guards file past the two women and Rey’s eyes follow them, noting how far down the hall they go. It is enough distance for privacy and ambiguity, should anyone pass by and wonder about their presence. But no matter the distance, the sight of Senate Guards is enough to make anyone anxious for them to leave.

“When will that be?” Rey asks. 

“Whenever it is decided. I will come at the designated time to escort the detainee.”

The detainee is currently standing in the middle of his fashionable cell, with his back to the door. His shoulders fill up the space between the partitions on either side of the room, tense and bracing as if the walls were about to cave in. Who's to say they won’t by morning?

“What about me?” 

Captain Artem studies her, the helmet’s smooth surface reflecting Rey’s anxiety with unnerving accuracy and revealing absolutely none of the captain’s thoughts. But then, there is a shift. It is so discreet, Rey thinks it might be her own wishful thinking, but she finally feels something of the captain in the Force: the tiniest heartbeat of compassion. 

“It is procedure for detainees to be in isolation before a hearing,” the captain says, to Rey’s dismay. “It is also procedure for them to be in a cell, not a senatorial chamber. So, perhaps, this time… exceptions can be made. However, no exceptions can be made tomorrow.”

Relief and fear tangle again, and Rey wordlessly agrees with the terms. She nods, and Captain Artem takes her leave. Rey immediately closes the door behind her, afraid leaving it open any longer would invite the captain to change her mind or encourage Rey to do something foolish. She feels foolish anyway, with her forehead pressed to the door, anxiously waiting. Eventually, she gets what she’s waiting for: Captain Artem’s footsteps fade down the hall into silence. 

She is alone, with Ben.

Relief and fear tighten into a terrible knot.

 _“As soon as we’re alone again,”_ he had promised , _“we’ll talk.”_

What an idiot she was to make him swear to that. She wants to hit her head against the door, but then that would make a sound, would trigger the guards coming or worse… the conversation. Neither of which are at the top of her list of wants. They’re at the very bottom, pushed by a list of absolutely nothing else except for one thing at the top: to have more time. 

If they talk now, about all the things they keep to themselves— there would be no more unfinished business, nothing left to resolve, nothing to guarantee fate would bring them back together tomorrow. The guards would come, the door would close between them, and there would be closure. If they just don’t talk— if they just keep a few, vital pieces of the puzzle to themselves— if they do that, maybe whatever tomorrow brings won’t mean the end. Even exile, or an execution, would just be a detour on their journey back to each other, to put those pieces together. The Force would make sure of that, as it did before. If they just… leave it all for later.

But Rey can feel Ben waiting for her. He’s still standing in the middle of the room, waiting and watching. Tense, and braced. He takes a step towards her, ready to engage. So, she braces herself too, ready to go back on everything she said on the Falcon, and turns— 

Metal crashes against her chest. 

Ben’s bound hands capture her; his palms catch the breath in her throat, his fingers clutch her cheeks and neck— swiftly lifting her head. To kiss her. Ben’s mouth swallows the words Rey didn’t want to say; he presses onto her lips a much more desirable and passionate motion. He commits to it with such fervor, she stumbles back and bumps into the door. With him chasing right after, refusing to let her go. She is no better, her hands gripped onto his arms, pulling him into her. Knowing where they want to go, their bodies press onto one another and the kiss plunges deeper. Twisting, tasting, ravenously taking every morsel of her mouth with his; absorbing her gasps and moans like water… This is the kiss that’s been growing and waiting since the first time he saw her, the seed of it planted in that forest on Takodana. Finally, he feeds it fully. 

Having turned off all inhibitions, Ben moves as though kissing her like this is the last sin he’ll ever commit. She prays it isn’t.

He seems to wish the same and takes his time stealing her lower lip between his, dragging out the deed by suckling on it. The touch of his tongue on her sets off throbbing alarms, her head full of smoke.

Not wanting his list of crimes to include Rey’s asphyxiation, Ben’s mouth releases hers and finally lets her breath. Her sigh is all steam.

 _So_ , she thinks contently to herself, _not a virgin._

“What?”

A bubble of nervous laughter bursts; Rey’s eyes fling open. The first thing she sees is Ben’s mouth, plump and red and cracked into a slack-jawed grin. Her face, already burnt up, crumbles to ash.

“I didn’t,” she stammers, witnessing from far too close how Ben’s eyes brighten as his laughter continues breathlessly; his throat, hands and shoulders all tremble with the shock and force of it. Rey grips his arms tighter. “I just… I thought…”

Ben can’t seem to compose himself, try as he might to flick off the straggler chuckles by shaking his head. When that doesn’t work, he dips his head to touch Rey’s; his is just as fevered, if not more so than hers. Yet the touch manages to cool the both of them, like an equalizer of sorts. He sighs. 

“... I am,” Ben says quietly, his warm breath falling delicate on Rey’s lips. “But that’s not— It’s not why…” 

It gradually dawns on Rey— as they both jointly try to catch their breath, as Ben candidly fumbles over his words and Rey’s heart jumps from one side of the ribcage to the other— what he’s reaching for: the very conversation she had wanted to avoid. Though, not anymore; she doesn’t want to avoid it, not if it means talking like this. Close, so close. She tilts her head ever closer, to better admire the spectacle of Ben: the beauty marks on his flushed skin, the timid crinkles at the corner of his downcast eyes, the soft smile that flutters with relief… and self-reproach.

“... for you to change your mind.” This admission is quieter than the last; Rey feels it more than she hears it — an isolated heaviness. “To lose you, again. That’s what I was waiting for.”

Rey frowns and relentlessly presses her forehead into his. “Ben—”

“I know,” he admonishes himself on her behalf; his eyebrows brush against her skin and his forehead crinkles like a waved white flag. “I know. It’s...” the knee-jerk response, the contradiction of wanting touch yet flinching all the same. It’s a dead name’s power over him, not yet completely relinquished. It’s the fear of having his home taken away.

Silently, Rey nods. She understands, now. How having to hope can mean having something to lose. If she wasn’t so relieved— and afraid— about being with him, she would be enraged by his attempts to push hope, and her, away. 

“I’m sorry,” he sighs; it’s such a sweet sound, Rey closes her eyes to relish it. “I’ve wasted a lot of time, haven’t I?”

She huffs. “Absolutely.”

Even with eyes shut, she can see Ben looking at her, so vivid are his feelings. They color the back of her eyelids. The stroke of his thumb over her lips makes everything flash white, then red. His nose brushes against hers, presses into her cheek. Ben’s intentions fill the pathetic sliver of space between them, swelling and pulling at her with its visceral gravity. She aches. She opens her eyes. And is swallowed by his.

“Let me make it up to you?”

His question is desperate. Her answer is immediate. 

Rey’s thumbs drift up onto metal. There’s a green glow, and a clatter of cuffs on the floor.


End file.
